It has always been in the interest of Hungary (and Europe) to have an economically strong, socially stable Germany as its partner. Unfortunately, Chancellor Merkel's reign that is slowly coming to an end has not been good for Germany or Europe.
According to many, he has become a puppet of the background power, and many explain this with the scandal that broke out in 2015, when it was revealed that the American secret services were tapping his mobile phone.
As for the migration crisis strangling the German economy - perhaps because of the above - he didn't even listen to his own economic advisor, the star economist Werner Sinn, who teaches at several universities. We know this from the fact that Sinn retired in 2018 and then wrote his book "The Search for the Truth", in which he clearly explained that the one trillion euros spent so far on migrants will never pay off for Germany. He put it like this:
anyone who thinks that the demand for (skilled) workers will be the same in the next ten, twenty or thirty years can be called a dreamer. Either a welfare state or an immigrant country. Both together will not work in the long run.
In the case of the vaccine against COVID-19, Merkel advocates that only the two American vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) can be used in the EU, which were first approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which plays the role of the EU's drug regulatory authority. It is true that he could not or did not want to close the loophole so that, in addition to the large joint vaccine procurement, the members of the Union could also negotiate the procurement of vaccines individually, independently of the Union.
The Hungarian opposition also tuned in to this. In November, party spokesman Balázs Barkóczi declared that "the government should not conduct human experiments on Hungarians with the Russian vaccine against the coronavirus" . He also added that other countries have no intention of experimenting with the Russian preparation on their own citizens. (Parenthesis: as of March this year, more than 40 countries are already using this...)
But in January, the unthinkable happened. Chancellor Merkel announced at an extraordinary international press conference that
the German government will support the Russian side to obtain the EMA's license for the distribution of Sputnik V in the EU,
in fact, as soon as it becomes available, they are even ready to discuss the production of the vaccine in Germany. And last week, German news portals already reported that Germany is buying 30 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, and that the WHO and the EMA will start the official licensing process on May 10.
The domestic opposition also switched to this, and their new target became the vaccine produced by the Chinese Sinopharm. The DK launched a petition against it, and Gergely Arató, the deputy faction leader of the left-wing party, called on the government at a press conference to " end the Chinese vaccine campaign, which is extremely harmful to the willingness to be vaccinated"!
Moreover, as the climax of the DK's anti-vaccination campaign, Zoltán Komáromi, the party's health politician , argued in the February 25 broadcast of Ejenes Beszéd And in Pestszentlőrince, a mass indignation broke out after that
DK mayor Sándor Szaniszló announced in a post that unused Chinese vaccines will be shipped from the district.
At the same time, hundreds of commentators claimed that the left-wing city administration did not even ask them, even though they would have accepted Sinopharm without thinking.
However, something unexpected happened yesterday.
Through the World Health Organization (WHO), Germany and China must mutually recognize the vaccines used against the new type of coronavirus, Angela Merkel said in Berlin after meeting with Chinese Premier Li Kochi.
Moreover, he confirmed that China and Germany can play an important role in the fight against the epidemic, and that both countries can contribute to making it possible to vaccinate their own populations.
And that's not all. In the noon news program of Magyar Televízió today, the German correspondent of the public television also said that the vaccination certificates of the German guest workers in China who were vaccinated with the Chinese vaccine are already accepted in Germany.
However, Merkel's announcement is like a well-aimed left hook on the chin of the domestic opposition.
Of course, we see that they are trying very hard to escape from the trap they have made themselves, but at the same time they are still hoping that - if nothing else - at least the Chinese vaccine will be scrapped by the WHO and the EMA.
However, there are very few of them, especially compared to Merkel.
