Victor Orban said that the European Union is “playing with fire”, as he turns his back on the bloc which is “not the same as it was 20 years ago”.
The Hungarian Prime Minister said that the EU is currently in an economic crisis fueled by the war in Ukraine, and said that the bloc is in danger, claiming that most of the MEPs were pro-war.
Speaking on a local radio station about the 20th anniversary of Hungary's accession to the EU, Orban said: “We joined the union because Europe meant peace and prosperity. Now we are in an economic crisis.
“The Europe we joined created more than twenty percent of the world's economic power. Now we have moved back from there, our competitors have all overtaken us, and that was not what we were hoping for. And there was also no talk of European leaders dragging the continent into war instead of peace.”
Orban turns back on EU as he warns bloc 'playing with fire'
GettyThe Hungarian Prime Minister added: “Europe is playing with fire; we are on the frontier between peace and war.”
He said that when Budapest joined, back in 2004, the EU accounted for more than 20 per cent of worldwide economic output, a figure which has now shrunk significantly according to Orban.
Orban said that the impact of funding the war in Ukraine has been detrimental on the economies of many EU countries, citing Germany as an example.
He said Berlin has been "destroyed" by the Russian-Ukrainian war as the Germans pay twice as much for energy as they did before the war when they imported gas from Russia.
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Orban said that the impact of funding the war in Ukraine has been detrimental on the economies of many EU countries
REUTERSDiscussing his own country’s financial hardships, Orban said the war had resulted in inflation. He claimed: “Hungary's economy would have doubled if there had been no war.”
Orban sees the only solution to fixing current economic woes being to engage with China and Africa.
“The Hungarian economy’s capacity for action must be expanded in the present situation to a greater extent than we have been accustomed to in the past,” the Prime Minister concluded.
Last month, it was reported that Orban wants to join forces with Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni in an attempt to gain leverage in the European Parliament.
The decision comes ahead of the upcoming EU election in June, with Orban, alongside Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, hoping that a new right-wing alliance will help them gain more influence in the next parliamentary term.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Mihaly Orban arrives for an EU LeadersGETTYObran’s party, Fidesz, is considering which faction to join after they left the centre-right European People's Party in 2021.
Options include the national-conservative European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group and the far-right Identity and Democracy (ID).
An alternative option could be forming a new group altogether.
“The current structure is not good: the national conservative forces are leading in the polls and do not have an adequate voice in the European Parliament,” Balazs Orban, political director of the Hungarian Prime Minister, told Euractiv.
Taking a dig at the current factions within the European Parliament, he said: “So we need to create an environment where national conservative forces are much more heard on the European stage as well.”