Viktor Orbán on liberalism and stopping immigration to protect Schengen

Hungarian Prime Minister Orban doing the interview.

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Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was interviewed on Kossuth Rádió’s “180 Minutes” programme on Jan. 14, 2016. 

The following are two excerpts relating to the European migration crisis:

I do not want to begin the year with debates which may seem to be of an ideological nature, but for some time I have been saying that the liberal mentality – liberalism in its present form, in this modern form – has turned against freedom. The fact that liberals have turned certain principles into rigid dogmas and want to make them compulsory is bad for freedom of speech. This issue, too, relates to those who want to lecture us on freedom of speech. In the name of liberalism and freedom they supress all negative news associated with refugees or migrants, as certain developments in real life do not coincide with their ideological views and they want to take in immigrants, thinking that it is good that are coming into a country.

But in fact they are doing something bad in the name of freedom in democracy, and are not moving towards a system built on freedom. As a result, today freedom of the press is much wider and deeper, much more diverse in Central Europe than in many Western European countries. Beyond the issue of public security, this whole case – of harassment and sexual assault – draws attention to the current state of freedom of opinion, public discourse and the freedom of the press in Western Europe.

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Recently the Germans have said that the flow of immigrants must be slowed down. We should not forget that nowadays around one hundred thousand illegal migrants are arriving in the territory of Europe every month. We Hungarians do not really perceive this because we have defended ourselves, and they are no longer coming here. As a result, this problem does not feature in our lives. But we cannot ignore the fact that we are affected, because this is a European issue, and all the other countries are suffering from it because they failed to take the necessary protective measures in good time. They are trying to do so now: you can see that they are reinstating border controls, and so on. This is not good news for us and we aren’t happy about it. Because they were unable to protect the Schengen Area’s external borders – no one, apart from the Hungarians was able to do so – defence structures, visa schemes, border controls and fences are being introduced within the Schengen Area. Fences and defence lines should not have been erected within the Schengen Area and within Europe, but on the external border of the Schengen Area – as Hungary has done. Freedom within the area would then have been preserved. But as we failed to protect this zone of freedom from the outside, it is now shrinking on the inside, and we are increasingly losing the opportunity for free movement. These are all negative developments. So despite the fact that one can say that we Hungarians have proved to be right, while this may be true it did not make us happy at all, because here a dark prophesy is turning into reality. If we do not protect the external borders we shall lose our internal freedom. Hungary is not happy about this, and so we think that the current German position that immigration must be slowed down has taken a turn towards common sense.

But in my opinion this will not be enough. The crucial question for 2016 will be whether the others, too, will finally realise that slowing down immigration is not enough: it must be stopped. To this end, we must build lines of defence; Hungary has set an example in this. I think that the next line of defence which must be built should be on Greece’s northern border: a European line of defence must be built on the border between Bulgaria and Greece and between Macedonia and Greece. Bulgaria must be admitted to the Schengen Area, as it has fought well and has met all its treaty obligations. We must strengthen Macedonia: we must send money, personnel and equipment there, so that we can build a European line of defence. I have no illusions that the agreement concluded with the Turks will be enough on its own. It is a fine thing that the Turks have promised that there will be a line of defence there, but using our own resources we must build a new European line of defence one country further in: on the northern border of Greece. And that is where we must stop – not just slow down, but stop – immigration.