What awaits us this year in domestic and foreign policy? Will there be an Erasmus? Can our country avoid recession? What will the result of the national consultation on sanctions against Russia be enough for at the EU level? The Mandiner asked political scientist Tamás Fricz, spokesperson of the Civil Solidarity Forum, about the last broadcast of the Commentary Club on M5.
The year 2023 will be extremely difficult, a third of the world may sink into recession , say analysts. Could Hungary be an exception? How skillfully has the Orbán government managed to maneuver and make appropriate decisions since the outbreak of the war? What can we expect this year at the foreign and domestic political levels - broadly speaking?
According to my conviction, the Orbán government's primary concern has always been the representation of Hungarian interests, not compliance with some international expectation. This has determined his actions since the outbreak of the war. In order for the government to effectively represent our economic interests, it had to take on the conflicts with the European Union, whose attitude to the war is directly opposed to Hungarian considerations. Brussels is already on its ninth set of sanctions against Russia, which are actually ineffective, but they harm Europe a lot, especially in the area of energy carriers. Through clever politicking, the government managed to ensure that the rules of the oil embargo did not apply to us, while at the same time it managed to remain part of the European community - if the union can even be called that. It is a fact, however, that the year 2023 will be a year of conflicts, in my opinion, between the leadership of the union and Hungary, because of course it is difficult for them to swallow, and in fact they are not at all able to accept that we are going our separate ways. The formula is simple: Brussels and the dominant member states, but unfortunately the Baltic states and Poland are also advocating for the continuation of the war, and if you think about it more, the EU is essentially a belligerent on the side of the Ukrainians – sorry, the Americans... – while we remained neutral – and this is not a small difference between us and the mainstream of the union.
We want peace, Brussels the continuation of the war; just now the swedish government holding the presidency announced that the ukrainians must win this war. Well, this is quite a big difference between us and the union... This could lead to a more serious breach of bread between us and Brussels.
In our last conversation, he put it this way: "if Brussels crosses a border, we don't necessarily have to force this relationship any further." Well: could this certain limit come in 2023...? In which case or cases can the conflict become extremely intense?
Yes, I think that you cannot and should not stay in any organization that wants to force us to imitate ourselves, to lose our identity, to deny our culture and values. Let's be clear: you don't have to stay in a marriage if it no longer shows any signs of being a real marriage, but you also have to leave a group of friends or a club if the club's rules are arbitrarily changed by the leaders to our detriment, and they are not allowed to have a say in this. So: let's stay in the union as long as possible, but really only as long as possible and worthwhile. After what?
However, as I indicated last time, I believe and see that both the Parliament and the Commission have lost their authority and legitimacy, and in recent weeks, with the disclosure of corruption cases, their moral credibility. So, in fact, a mood has developed in the recent period that we should not actually leave the union, but rather try Euxit first, by which I mean that the union should be abolished in this form and revived with radical reforms, in which the ever closer union would be replaced by the ever less union, i.e. instead of the tightest union, the loosest union would become the defining direction, which would be based on the democratic decision-making of the nation-states and not on the arbitrary decisions of the Commission. At the same time, we would stop ideological, cultural and value-based efforts to convince each other, instead we would concentrate on mutually beneficial economic and trade relations, and the rest would be based on mutually beneficial treaties and spontaneous organizations of independent European states. In other words, the union in this form has become bankrupt and decayed, it is time to look for a new, loose, pragmatic form of cooperation between sovereign states.
The one-year conference series on the future of the union has just taken place, so it would be the right time for a complete rethink. We could even initiate this...
Tamás Kemenes' entire article on Mandine by clicking here
