European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered “a real pro-war speech” in the European Parliament on Wednesday, the minister in charge of European Union affairs said.

Hungarian government: Von der Leyen gave ‘real pro-war speech’

János Bóka told a regular press briefing on Thursday that the state of the EU was going from bad to worse, so the speech was important an indicator of whether a change of direction could be expected in ill-fated EU policies or not. But the EC president ended up giving “a real pro-war speech”, he added.

Photo: FB/European Commission

Instead of introducing changes to boost competitiveness, von der Leyen argued for the EU to switch to military production economy, he said. The main priorities would be financing Ukraine, further centralising EU institutions, drawing away powers from member states, upping pressure against political opponents, and increasing the censorship of opinions, Bóka said.

He added that, based on the speech, there would be no real change in EU migration policy, no substantive review of “misguided” green transition, no correction in the Ukrainian accession process, but rather a series of bad trade agreements.

• PM Orbán demands reimbursement from the EU for Hungary’s border protection costs

Bóka said that all elements of the EC’s policies were misguided

“As long as the Russian-Ukrainian conflict continues, the EU will be a lame duck in political terms; as long as our security vulnerability persists, we will be in a subordinate position in transatlantic trade relations; as long as the EU wants to break away from Russian energy sources, the European economy will not be competitive, and as long as the EU is involved in this war, it will not be able to build balanced economic relations with China and India based on mutual benefits”, he said.

He added that as a result, the EU would become even more embroiled in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict than it was now, and after a while it would probably become its sole financier.

“We will still be unable to defend our external borders, we won’t be able to reduce the exceptionally high energy prices in the EU, low growth will persist in the EU, and there will be no real turnaround in competitiveness. This will result in further indebtedness not only for the member states but also for the European Union,” he said.

• Hungarian government slams Brussels: ‘The Commission has become Ukraine’s commission’

Some member states, including Hungary, had introduced several measures to dampen the effects of misguided policies, Boka said. However, he added that he expected the EU would step up action against such measures.

The EC has already stated that they want progressive taxation in Hungary, the narrowing and discontinuation of tax allowances, the end of government-backed low utility costs, and the withdrawal of home creation schemes, the interest rate cap and markups caps, he said.

Commenting on the annullment on Thursday by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) of an earlier decision by the European Commission, he said it did not establish any violation by Hungary and did not pose any obstacle to the continuation of the Paks 2 project to upgrade the country’s sole commercial nuclear power plant.

Boka explained that the CJEU had not ruled that public procurement rules were violated, but only that the EC had not probed the matter — or at least had not justified its position.

He noted that the EC had established in another probe, in 2015, that the Paks 2 public procurement procedures complied with extant rules. He added that the court had objected to the lack of connection between the two cases.

As the CJEU found no fault with the system of state aid or the public procurement procedure used, Boka said there was no legal obstacle in the way of the Paks 2 investment continuing according to schedule.

Meanwhile, Boka said no response had yet been received to Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s letter to the EC president regarding the daily EU penalty of one million euros imposed on Hungary.

“We will raise this issue in every forum, especially in light of the fact that the EC president recently visited the EU’s eastern border states, where she stated that the construction of physical border protection structures was a shared European responsibility. Our request was simply that all member states should receive equal support from these funds,” he said.

Meanwhile, commenting on the EU’s defence industry investment plan, for which Hungary can submit plans worth 16.2 billion euros based on a preliminary decision, he said these plans were currently being prepared. When asked about the EU funds that are currently blocked, he said that he expected Hungary to be able to access them.

Commenting on von der Leyen’s criticism of Israel, he said that there were a number of preconditions for taking credible action against growing anti-Semitism in the EU, and one of these was that the EU should maintain its strategic partnership and meaningful and constructive dialogue with the state of Israel.

He said the EU was officially committed to a two-state solution, but Hungary saw the two-state solution as the end of a process, not the beginning. “Our most important interest in the region is peace and stability,” he added.

Boka also referred to von der Leyen’s statement that EU decisions must “break free from the shackles of [unanimous decision-making].” He added that this was a “gross misrepresentation of her role”, as the EC president should act as the guardian of the EU treaties, yet she considered them to be shackles.

Commenting on von der Leyen’s plan to broaden he various conditionality procedures within the EU budgetary framework, he said Hungary’s position was clearly not to support any instrument that would allow EU funds to be used to exert political and ideological pressure. “As long as Hungary has a national, sovereign government, the European Union will not have such a seven-year budget,” he added.

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