PM Orbán’s annual Kötcse address

In a first reaction to the Prime Minister’s regular September speech to his intellectual supporters, a pro-government commentator welcomes Mr Orbán’s resolve to bolster Hungary’s independence.

At this year’s ‘civic picnic’ near Lake Balaton, the Prime Minister reportedly described the government’s economic policy and its measures aimed at reversing the demographic slide as tools designed to serve the cause of Hungary’s independence. As in previous years, participants were asked not to air his words. According to one particular leaked detail, the authorities would plan legislation to ban same-sex couples adopting children. Mr Orbán is also reported to have said that although Matteo Salvini’s League in Italy, and Austria’s Freedom Party have suffered setbacks lately, such political forces are bound to make a comeback.

In Magyar Nemzet, Dávid Megyeri predicts that the opposition will criticize the Prime Minister for his policy centred around national independence. However, he argues, Hungary’s successes over the past years are precisely due to such endeavours. Megyeri explains that Hungary doesn’t want to be a peripheral country but intends to ‘build independence along with those who agree with us, in the interest of Europe as a whole’. Independence is a must, he writes, in the face of those he calls globalist, elitist and authoritarian forces, ‘should they try to commandeer from Moscow or from Brussels’.

Tags: sovereignty