Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-01-18-Speech-3-261-000"
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"en.20120118.23.3-261-000"2
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, allow me first of all to thank you on behalf of my country for your persistence in paying attention to matters related to Hungary. I wish to express my thanks for the support of those of you who stood up for Hungary and spoke as its friends.
I would like to assure Mr Swoboda, who in his speech expressed his concerns about a Hungarian political ‘crop rotation,’ that I spent 15 of the last 20 years in opposition. Earlier I had been in government for four years, then I lost, and now I am head of government once again. You can rest assured that if there is one person in Europe who is in favour of political competition then it is me, and in this you can always count on me.
Ladies and gentlemen, to Mr Verhofstadt I must say that the statement he read out was accurate, but there is one fact he omitted at the end. It is true that the statement was written by former anti-communist dissidents, but the fact he omitted is an important one. These people were members of the leading committee of the liberal party, and were therefore partisan, and the party in which they worked has lost the trust of the Hungarian people to such an extent that at the last elections they did not even reach the five per cent threshold required to make it into parliament.
Ladies and gentlemen, due to the lateness of the hour allow me to forgo correcting every one of the unfortunately numerous factual mistakes that were made, and I therefore only ask those who made comments and criticised or accused Hungary and the Hungarian Constitution to please be so kind as to read that constitution. It is an exceptionally valuable document and one can find several novel things in it. The protection of minorities, the protection of sign languages, environmental protection, opposition to GMOs – these are all things that I believe are worthy of consideration by any European country.
Ladies and gentlemen, I also had the impression that this debate, which was about Hungary, had a European aspect as well, and was an ideological debate of sorts. People like me, and our political community, must accept that unfortunately the ideals we represent do not enjoy majority support in this House either. Our ideals are undoubtedly Christian and based on personal responsibility; we find national sentiment to be an important and positive thing, and we believe that families are the foundations of the future. It may be that a great many people believe otherwise, but that makes our position no less a European one. It may be that with this we are in a minority in Europe, but this position is no less a European position, and we are free to represent this conviction. You may disagree with what I will quote now, but I personally profess Schumann’s view that there will either be a Christian democracy in Europe or there will be no democracy at all. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a European position.
As regards concrete details, allow me to avoid having the same debate here that we will have to conduct with the Commission on the specifics. I would only like to mention two concrete points here. We have no conflict with the Commission over the independence of the judiciary. The retirement age of judges is not a matter of the justice system but of the new pension system. Hungary was ruined by an unmanageable pension system riddled with exceptions, and we therefore made the decision to introduce a single and general age limit for civil servants. We raised the age limit of police and military personnel, as theirs was below the new limit, whereas we lowered that of others, and to us this is therefore not a matter of the justice system but a matter of the pension system, and we will gladly consider the position of the Commission. We are ready to accept all the comments made in respect of the independence of the National Bank but one. At this point there remains only one point in this matter where we are in sharp conflict with the Commission. The Commission is asking us to refrain from having the President of the National Bank and the members of the Monetary Council swear an oath before parliament and on the constitution. I suggest that we think this over. Other than that, it seems to me that we are of the same opinion in all matters. Whether we will need to concede on this latter issue – I ask that we leave that discussion to another time.
As regards the old and the new constitution, ladies and gentlemen, I would only like to point out that the old constitution was incapable of protecting the country’s assets, and plunged the Hungarian people up to their necks in future debt. It failed to protect competition, which resulted in the Hungarian economy being ruled by monopolies and cartels. The previous constitution failed to protect the environment, which as a result decayed and deteriorated, and the previous constitution also failed to protect civil liberties, as it did not protect civilians against the arbitrary use of police force and allowed paramilitary organisations to keep minority groups in fear. The new constitution remedies all these deficiencies, and I am convinced that it does a good job at remedying them.
Finally, allow me one last comment. We Hungarians believe that what makes Europe Europe is its culture. In our view the foundations of European culture are goodwill and benevolence. There have always been and there always will be disputes in Europe, but as long as the arguments in these debates are specific, reasonable and sober, and as long as we assume the other party’s good intentions we will always be able to find a way to resolve these disputes. It grieves me that in today’s debate I was on many occasions presented not with arguments and concrete facts, but with absurd factual errors, vehemence, rage and prejudice. I am convinced that accusations made without knowledge of the laws under discussion are unbecoming Europe, as are judgements motivated not by common sense and objectivity but partisan rage and vehemence. We Hungarians, and I myself, believe in these principles, and it is these principles that guided us to the European Union, and we ask everyone to return to the European way of resolving disputes.
Hungary was, is and will be a land of freedom fighters. As a 1 000-year-old European nation we expect everyone to show us the respect and European manners that we accord to all nations. Should any of you have doubts, feel free to visit Hungary, acquaint yourselves with us; acquaint yourselves with the Hungarian people. Thank you for your attention."@en1
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