The European Dream Moved Into Central Europe

The Krynica Economic Forum was held this week in Krynica, Poland. Representatives from the Visegrad Four (Poland, Hungary, Czechia, and Slovakia) plus Ukraine took part. The gathering honored Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán by giving him the Man of the Year Award.

In a press release, Mr. Orbán outlined his ideas about the future of Ukraine in Europe. He also discussed the European migration crisis and the most productive ways that the Central European countries can deal with it.

Many thanks to CrossWare for translating this summary from the Hungarian daily Magyar Idők:

Viktor Orbán: the European Dream Moved to Central Europe

The Visegrad countries agreed that they need the European Union (EU); not just any kind, but a strong one — said Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in his press release from the Economic Forum conference in Krynica, Poland.

In the company of representatives of the Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia), Viktor Orbán and the Ukrainian Prime Minister made the statement and he explained: today the Union is rich but weak, and that is the worst possible combination. “This brought us troubles,” the migration, which is an uncontrolled process.

“We must end this. Since we are Christian countries, we know what command we must follow based on our morals, but we must bring help to where it is needed instead of bringing the problem to us,” emphasized the Prime Minister.

He added: defense against the uncontrolled migration must be placed as far south as possible, so we need to help Bulgaria.

After the prime ministers’ discussion, Viktor Orbán explained: when Ukraine decided to change its historical course and take a new direction, it got nothing but friendly and encouraging voices from the EU, and received a promise: the members of the Union would be ready to accept Ukraine step by step into its natural community, as a Central European country and a member of the Union, where it belongs.

But in the last two years nothing really happened in that regard, and what did happen should not have —mentioning the Dutch referendum, where they rejected the ratification of the association agreement between the EU and Ukraine.

Viktor Orbán thinks the situation is very difficult, and the EU has its own problems. There is “expansion exhaustion”, and it has run out of countries who would continue to support Ukraine. The V4 countries remain friends of Ukraine and they support a faster approach to joining the EU. The PM thinks that the difficulties of EU should not delay giving Ukraine people visa-free travel; they have to keep their word as promised, and the V4 are committed to this.

The European dream moved into Central Europe

Viktor Orbán, together with the prime ministers of the Visegrad countries and the Ukrainian prime minister, took part in a discussion where he highlighted: a whole generation of European politicians had a “secret dream”, that they can use the EU to achieve the weakening of the member states’ national, religious, and historic identities, and that all this would be replaced by a new European identity. But we found out there is no such identity that could replace the old ones, he said. He added: now it is proven that the only successful countries are the ones with strong identities.

Viktor Orbán explained: Twenty years ago they told young people in Europe: if you regularly go to school, respect the law and work diligently then you will go further and have a fuller life than your parents did.

“Now the new generation of young people would just laugh in most union member state, if someone would say this to them,” he said. “Now the European dream has moved into the Central European region.”

Concerning the migration, the prime minister said the following: Here we all are representatives from countries that have are an outgrowth of a Christian culture; we can’t behave as if “we have a rock in place of our hearts”. We have conflicting feelings: first we feel threatened by the migration; on the other hand we feel sorry for the refugees, he explained. He commented: we must do both, help the needy and protect our identities.

He confirmed his previous media statements: We need to help, but we have bring the help where the trouble is, and Europe does not do this today.

Europe is Rich But Weak

Viktor Orbán reminded us: the migration flow is coming from the south, and Hungary is the southernmost country of the Visegrad group.

“War is not the true reason for the migration, but the fact that Europe is rich and provides a good life, and others want that, too,” said Orbán.

He emphasized: we must make it clear there is a lawful way to enter Europe, otherwise everything we worked for so far will be lost, and we will be overrun by another community that has a much stronger identity. Many overestimated the integrating effect of multiculturalism, and underestimated the ability of the freshly-arrived to keep their own identity, proclaimed Orbán.

The PM stated: we must defend our borders, but this is a difficult task. Viktor Orbán thanked everybody who helped Hungary to protect its southern border, and asked his audience to look at Hungarians as they appear in history: gallant warriors of border fortresses. His statement was followed by applause.

Concerning the relationship between the EU and Ukraine, the Prime Minister explained: today Europe plays a much smaller role in Ukraine’s future than the USA or Russia. In the western Balkans Russia and Turkey can end up playing a leading role. So if we want to help Ukraine, first Europe must regain its self-confidence and its ability to take action. We must reform and change the Union in order to help, stated Orbán.

At the end of the conversation the prime ministers spoken about the idea of a V4 television channel. Viktor Orbán welcomed the initiative, and he said: “We should have had that ten or fifteen years ago; we would have got out of the chaotic world of the post-communist era media that much sooner.”

26 thoughts on “The European Dream Moved Into Central Europe

  1. This article was not directly about migration but I thought it should be interesting to include it here. I believe what we witnessing now is the V4 is organizing Europe 2.0.

    Instead of the old tired soon-to-be Islamic states they looking to the Ukraine (and the baltic states!?) for partnership and this would be beneficial for all. The V4+1 = V5? would be suddenly much stronger, almost as strong as the present EU, while it would provide a nice cushion between the V4 and Russia. (Poland is most nervous about that closeness; based on their past bad experiences they really freaking out, they are even inviting in direct USA military support to their country).

    Also a Ukraine with close partnership and maybe EU 2.0 membership would be beneficial to the Russians as well because they would give them a way to connect and influence (and be a partner) with this new alliance. They would provide the Russians with a just as comfortable cushion against the probably violent Islamic old Europe.

    In this scenario Merkel and her company would be less and less significant while as they phrased it, the European dream would move up north and with the direct connection to the baltic states it would be a significant new “empire” for the second part of the century. A pretty good plan!

    • just for your information – there is currently a war between Russia and Ukraine. 2.5 years, ten thousand only Ukrainian citizen were killed.

      also on Russia’s that role Mr. Orban mentioned, you can google Budapest 1956.
      on Russia’s role in Czech affairs, google Prague 1968.
      on Russia’s role in Polish affairs, google Katyn.

      V4 isn’t only anti-islamization project, it is also meant to be anti-imperialist.

      • Note the Orban advocated a stronger EU, only with immigration restrictions.

        The EU is conceived as a blending of not only economies, but of cultures, peoples, and security. The countries such as France will be (for the time being) allowed to remain in existence as glorified provinces. As the current political development of the US shows, what began clearly as a strongly-marked separation between federal and state authority has devolved into a proto-fascist federal government, where the right of the states exist only where the federal government has not exerted itself to encompass.

        The EU or the V4, if taking the EU as a model, will go along those same lines.

        While we’re at it, Orban is following socialist ideology when he states the European governments have an obligation to use (tax) dollars to help foreign people in need. Why? The government has an obligation to protect people’s security, property, and its own citizen’s well-being. I don’t see an obligation to distribute tax monies to non-citizens.

        If the European governments take responsibility to alleviate the sufferings of peoples engaged in their own squabbles, the commitment will be eternal.

        By the way, I recognize there is a certain moral obligation to the millions of Iraqis, Libyans, and Syrians killed as a result of US-encouraged or initiated wars and rebellions, but I do not believe the government should act on the obligation. Just stop it and don’t do it in the future.

  2. Thank God for Viktor Orban and the few men of integrity among our otherwise rotten so-called elite. Multi-culti is a transition state en route to an Islamic mono-culture in which, if the Marxists get their way, white Europeans will be impoverished, enslaved and ultimately exterminated.

  3. Argh. He knows perfectly well that he is not gonna get a strong EU, that Ukraine is run by rich criminals in cahoots with neo-nazi Banderistas and hopelessly corrupt and if anyone is still sane in Europe, they will not take them in. (They don’t need visas, they flow over the borders unchecked. Cheap labor for the V4.)

    If Ukraine had taken Putin’s offer 2 years ago, they would not be the failed state they are today.

    It all sounds like [it is] said to please Brussels while the V4 do what they have to do to hold onto an edge of survival.

    • I just read on a central European blog that they all expressed their support for anti-Russian sanctions. What?! What’s that about?

      • Once a fuzzy-wuzzy Russian bear gave you “a hug” and you survived you would not like him much anymore… 🙂 Of course they do not want become loyal servants again to the Russian empire. However the closeness is there so they have to live with it. Even could be a good market for products from the V4 but that does not mean buddies for life.

  4. If Victor grew one of those […] long moustaches, and started carrying a saber, he would look the way he sounds. Love this man, Love, Love, Love.

  5. “The PM thinks that the difficulties of EU should not delay giving Ukraine people visa-free travel”

    Be careful what you wish for, Mr Orban. Many Europeans now wish they had controlled borders and visas were required. Without visas, any jihad maniac living in France or Germany could just slip into your country unnoticed.

    Here the AfD representative Matthias Manthei is stating the AfD policy of controlled borders: http://www.pi-news.net/2016/09/tv-tipp-illner-mit-matthias-manthei-afd/#more-531500

    • Visa-free travel might be a lethal blow to Ukraine. The country has been in a steep population decline since 1991. Deaths have outnumbered births and increasingly large numbers of Ukrainians have been leaving it to find work abroad. Most of them are still officially counted as residing in Ukraine though many of them are well-established in other countries and do not want to go back.

      As usual, it mostly working age people who emigrate and older ones who stay at home, thus exacerbating the ageing of the population.

      What with war, political violence, meltdown of national economy, social insecurity and rampant corruption, the exodus of Ukrainians has dramatically increased after the latest revolution.

      Visa-free travel would give Ukrainians more chances to find opportunities in Europe and stay there, thus emptying their country of labour resources and speeding up the nation’s collapse.

  6. “…..slip into your country unnoticed……”!?? The Muslims have been setting up their Muslims only infrastructure in Western Europe for decades now. Visa talk is kinda redundant? The nu confused Euroslavia smarmey should be good for an even more tragic demise. We can’t even have a good, “Tale Of Two Cities” scenario anymore because nobody anywhere seems to know the difference between right and wrong, love and hate, defeat, survival or which end is up.

  7. The V4 should be working on expanding their coalition to logical partners. For me, the most logical additions after Ukraine would be Romania and Bulgaria.

    • Austria and Slovenia would be the most logical… part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire that balanced, at its best, Europe between east and west.

      • Right now Austria still packing in migrants and if they want to send back people, they want to send it to Hungary as thank you for lawfully registering them. Maybe after October 2 repeated election will different winds going in Austria but right they are Germany’s “mini me”.

    • Why in the world would the V4 countries want to create another behemoth threat to national identity modeled after the EU?

      It seems to me there are specific mutual interests, such as security, trade, and travel that could be handled by bi-lateral negotiations between countries. A behemoth mega-organization is marginally less messy as it standardizes certain issues such as currency, but it provides a bureaucracy which is continually engaged in expanding its own scope and power.

  8. The Visegrad countries are the centre of the recovery of Europe. They should form a block together with the three Baltic states, Roumania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, possibly also Austria and Finland (if they hopefully manage to shed their unpopular “westernized” PC elites) , and associated non-EU states like Ukraine, Serbia and Macedonia, preferably even with Russia as an associated partner. Maybe Germany splits up along the borders of the Bundeslaender, and Bavaria and the 5 new Bundeslaender of the former DDR could join in as well. When Marine LePen wins the elections in France, and Wilders in the Netherlands, the reconquista of Europe can finally begin. It should start soon, because it’s already 5 to 12.

    • “preferably even with Russia as an associated partner”

      you have no clue what you are talking about.

      Russia is neo-imperial monster pursuing expansionist hegemonic goals in Europe, exactly as islamists and Turkey do.

      • I think that is a senseless comment, Mr A.Y..

        Both NATO and the EU Bloc can each just as readily be characterized as a ‘neo-imperial monster pursuing expansionist hegemonic goals in Europe’.

        This coincidence of being able to argue, in each case, such a plausible view of two powerful neighbouring polities suggests to me that our stand-off is the product of a mutual misunderstanding, where there is a kind of feedback loop of paranoia.

        In reality, especially now that the delusions of Communism have collapsed, both Russian and Western interests have once again much in common, as history has demonstrated.

        We have much to be grateful to Russia for – it is the most Easterly branch of Western European civilization, having produced fine contributions in all fields to Western culture; it also, arguably, destroyed Napoleon’s pretensions to arrogant invincibility, and it was a staunch and decisive ally during the War against Hitlerite Germany (albeit the altruism of the Russian people was mobilised in support of an ulterior Stalinist agenda). And today, of course, Russia is – or could be – our natural ally against the same Islamic terror that threatens us all.

        It is unfortunate that the political ‘West’ still harbours outdated Cold War era suspicions about Russia. We really must overcome such unthinking prejudice of a neighbour which fundamentally inhabits the same broad cultural universe as ourselves.

        However, any difficulties that remain between Western powers and Russia are perfectly possible to negotiate on. We have been, and still do seem to be, happy to make friends with far, far worse states.

        And this rational perspective demonstrates the crucial difference between the broadly Westernized orbit, and the completely mad and unbridled irredentist ravings emanating from Erdogan’s Turkey, as also the even more dangerously savage and psychotic outpourings of assorted Islamiscists: Because with people harbouring febrile fanatic dreams of a ruthless new Caliphate, who are hell-bent on ‘conversion by the sword,’ it is clearly impossible for us ever to have any truck.

        IMHO, anyone who can bracket modern Russia together with those murderous barbarian fanatics, who belong in the hazardous waste bin of history, exhibits a contempt for moral seriousness which is regrettable.

        And, no, I will not attempt to defend any possible imputation of a ‘straw man’ proposition that Putin’s Russia is ‘spotless and without blame’! What country or bloc or military alliance is? Britain? NATO? The EU?

        Of course not! The choice is between forces who are still progressing along the high road of a Christian-Humanist outlook, and those driving a destructive and backward-looking barbarism.

        The importance of securing the survival of this overarching civilisation is too important for its representatives to indulge in petty quibbles: Such a great inheritance deserves better than that one of its representative beneficiaries should be adopting offensive attitudes towards the other.

        Frankly, in no way does modern Russia resemble any kind of Islamic fanatic. Please don’t insult us with your [personal invective redacted], Mr A.Y..

  9. With reference to the ‘personal invective redacted’ at the end of my comment in response to that of Mr A.Y., I would like it to be known that this suppression of my overwhelming feeling of revulsion towards his sweeping demonisation of modern Russia was expressed in the most seemly terms, expressive only of my entirely legitimate criticism of the irrational and unhelpful character of his facile dismissal of a great country.

    I would not like your readers – and especially not Mr A.Y. – to think that I had indulged in in any indecency of expression whatsoever. ‘Irrational prejudice’ and ‘unhelpful nonsense’ would be a fair precis of the provocative but harmless response I articulated.

    I admit gladly to having expressed such a frank and forthright view of an ill-considered proposition – a proposition that I still think offends the intelligence of your readers, and does not adhere to the simple, decent tenet of fair play.

    It is regrettable that this empty declaration made by Mr A.Y himself in his response to Mr Sobieski – that is, ‘you have no clue what you are talking about’ – seems more properly to merit the status of ‘objectionable’ that you have seen fit to apply instead to the final comment in my own contribution. Mine at least was based on rational arguement, rather than just the arrogantly lofty pooh-poohing of Mr Sobieski’s proposition, which dismissive slight Mr A.Y. supported by no more than the bald assertion that Russia is quite beyond the Pale!

    I don’t approve of that kind of futile Tweedledum and Tweedledee kind of argument. To assume you are right just because you say so is rightly considered bad form in polite discussion. It is insulting. It shows boundless and baseless contempt for the person addressed.

    I took offence at that on behalf of Mr Sobieski. I contributed a reasoned argument in hopes of raising the tone of debate from the disgraceful level to which it threatened to descend.

    Apparently, though, G of V prefers, through the misleading characterisation of my frank and honest dismissal of a piece of arrant and indefensible nonsense as ‘personal invective’, to leave the unacceptable impression that my calm and considered view is in some way suspect and dubious.

    G of V is – of course – quite justified in wishing to protect its readers from indecent and gratuitous insult. But I don’t see that someone who had already insultingly dismissed another’s (Mr Sobieski’s) view with such scant respect, deserves to have his feelings cosseted. Really, if such bullying views are to be given undeserved respect in these columns, then I fear for the future standard of your debates.

    It should be possible and permitted for both Mr A.Y. and myself to take our chances in open debate. Then it would have been beyond question that my comment – whether anyone agreed with it or not – was presented reasonably, while his was actually the one intemperately expressed.

    What Mr A.Y. brought upon himself, you choose to shield him from – but in a way that makes my concluding paragraph seem to have been gratuitous in some way.

    You have disqualified ‘a palpable hit’. You have dignified a correspondent who has no justification to offer for his high-handed slighting of a perfectly inoffensive remark concerning Russia. Nothing I said was actionable, since it was not intended to insult, but only to reprove.

    Though I did not quite ‘draw it mild’ I’ve been given far worse drubbings by schoolteachers and by employers, and I would have thought someone who can evidently ‘dish it out’ himself ought to be expected to be able to take it as well.

    But it seems the grown-ups are now to follow the example of the pathetic ‘snowflake generation’.

    • For the record, here is the entire final paragraph of what you said before I redacted it:

      “Frankly, in no way does modern Russia resemble any kind of Islamic fanatic. Please don’t insult us with your irrationally prejudiced and unhelpful twaddle, Mr A.Y..”

      Characterizing your fellow commenter as “irrational” and “prejudiced” is ad-hominem. He may well have come to disagree with you via rational means, after carefully assessing all the information and thinking through his reasoning and arguments.

      To refer to his opinions as “twaddle” is insulting invective. Those who have lived in regions adjacent to Russia may have good, solid historical reasons for anti-Russian sentiments. Their opinions do not deserve to be dismissed as “twaddle”.

      That’s why I removed those phrases. I will do the same again, if the occasion warrants.

      As it happens, I agree more with your position than I do with his. However, that doesn’t mean I’ll allow insults and ad-hominem gibes to be used in place of reasoned argument.

      Civil discourse is mandatory here at Gates of Vienna.

    • I still don’t see the rush to form mega-national unions. Russia may or may not be a fresh bastion of Western culture. Or, Russia may be a totalitarian outpost of hundreds of millions of Muslims kept in check through a semi-representative form of government with a proto-Czar as the leader. In either case,why would the countries of Europe, especially those trying to maintain their own cultures, want any type of integration with Russia?

      It is vital to maintain border controls with passports and visas required for travel. I can’t think of a better way to control crime, terror, and to maintain clear distinctions between visitors and citizens.

      With computers, the existence of separate currencies presents a very minimal impediment to international trade. What separate currencies do do, however, is make deficit spending or subsidies by any particular government very obvious. Germany uses the habitual deficits of countries such as Greece and Italy as a means of controlling them through debt obligations. The Euro makes this financial imperialism less blatantly obvious.

      It’s hard to see how countries are more secure by globalizing their defense capabilities, and their defense decisions. Almost by definition, defense has to be flexible and immediate. Membership in a mega-group like, for instance, the EU obligates member states to adhere to standards and decisions not their own: and also serves as a tripwire to drag them into conflicts in which they have no business being involved.

      If Russia had attacked the base of the Turkish plane that shot the Russian fighter down, a perfectly natural response, by treaty NATO would have been obligated to enter into military conflict with Russia. This is almost insanity by definition.

      So, to summarize again, I’m confused why the V4 countries, on the verge of escaping the totalitarian, inefficient, and grossly self-destructive EU, are so anxious to enter into another federation.

      • “In either case,why would the countries of Europe, especially those trying to maintain their own cultures, want any type of integration with Russia?”

        I would agree with that. And I would add that it is hardly in the interests of Russia to get integrated with Europe. The poisonous influence of the suicidal ideology of multiculturalism and political correctness that reigns supreme in modern-day Europe (and the rest of the Western World) is last thing that Russia needs now.

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