Orban continues his peace initiative - but in a reserved manner

What follows is my English translation of an article, originally published on Movisol.org on 13th September 2024 and then on ComeDonChisciotte.org two days after, on 15th September 2024. (All formatting original).

Hungarian President Viktor Orbán.

In his appearance at the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy, on 6th September, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban revealed that he is pursuing his peace initiative, but no longer publicly, as he had initially done. He sent reports to his EU colleagues “within 12 hours” after each meeting, but at some point these reports were leaked and published, he said, implicitly alluding to sabotage.

Moreover, after sending recommendations to his colleagues, “the EU is what it is, it did not take them seriously and did not act on them”.

Regarding the content of his peace initiative, Orban said that, based on his own experience in the Balkan wars and the war in Georgia, “the first lesson is that if there is no communication, there is no possibility to stop a war. Communication is number one. Today there is no communication with Russia (...) The second is: ceasefire. If you wait until you have a peace plan that is accepted by both sides in the war, there will never be peace. (...) First the communication, then the ceasefire, then the start of negotiations for a peace plan. This is the right order and right now we are not doing it”.

After trips to Kiev and Moscow, Orban noted that neither on the Ukrainian nor the Russian side was there “an intention to achieve peace”. “Both leaders said that time is on their side. If the warring parties think that time is on their side, the war will continue”. That is why he went to Beijing, Washington and Mar-a-Lago. “I think we should create an international context and an environment that embodies and expresses, in a convincing way, that the whole world, not just the South, but the whole world, even Europe, would like to have a ceasefire as soon as possible”: https://x.com/PM_ViktorOrban/status/1832138399110627477.

Orban then tore into several aspects of EU policy. He called for a “reconsideration” of the Green Deal, because “so far it has been run against the business community”; he also explained why he is against a political union: “On war, on gender, on migration and on the issue of the labour society, we have different approaches. If you force us to unite on issues on which we do not agree, you will disintegrate the European Union”. On migration, for example, Orban proposes to have “opt-out” options for countries that do not want to follow the common migration policy.

Regarding his meetings with Trump and support for the former president-candidate, Orban explained:

“From what I understand, our response to Europe's loss of competitiveness is the formation of economic blocs and there is a political expression of this: democracy versus autocracy”. President Trump's approach is different: it is a deal-making plan. There is a need for such a plan, otherwise it will be difficult for the western part of the world economy to cooperate with the eastern part... This does not mean that under the Trump presidency there will be no divergence of interests with Europe, but a deal-making approach is much better than creating a bloc of the western economy against the eastern economy of the world. And we are moving in this direction (...) “I lived 26 years of my life during the Cold War, when the world economy was not united, it was divided into two parts. And I can say that those 26 years of my life and my country were pretty bad”.

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P.S.: Thanks to the readers who took their time to respond the poll in one of my previous articles and/or even write a comment.