Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has accused the EU of “playing with fire”, saying it is “not the same as it was 20 years ago”.
Speaking to a local radio station on the 20th anniversary of Hungary joining the bloc, Orban said he felt the EU is currently in an economic crisis fueled by the war in Ukraine adding that the bloc is in danger, claiming most of its MEPs were pro-war.
Orban said the country had made the right decision when it joined 20 years ago saying it brought “peace and prosperity” to the country but criticised what he felt it had become.
He told the local broadcaster: “We joined the union because Europe meant peace and prosperity. Now we are in an economic crisis.
“The Europe we joined created more than 20 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.”
“Europe is playing with fire; we are on the frontier between peace and war.”
When the country joined in 2004, Orban said the EU accounted for more than 20 percent of worldwide economic output, a figure which he says has now shrunk significantly.
Orban said the impact of funding the war in Ukraine has been detrimental to the economies of many EU countries, citing Germany as an example.
He said Germany had been “destroyed” by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the Germans pay twice as much for energy as they did before the war when gas was imported from Russia.
Orban went on to discuss his own country’s financial difficulties.
He said: “Hungary’s economy would have doubled if there had been no war.
“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.”
Orban said he wanted to see the bloc open up communications with China and Africa.
