Hungary’s prime minister used an appearance in the western Romanian town of Baile Tusnad to reveal that his primary concern is to promote national interests as opposed to the pursuit of a liberal democracy. He said his government would seek to break down the usual ideologies and that “we will seek out and hammer out a new form of a Hungarian state that could make our community a success for decades to come in the global race.”
While not surprising, the comments offer some context to his government’s continuing campaign to take control of the chief levers of economic power. A series of privatizations have been reversed or are under threat, and Orban is also working to reduce the level of debt owed to foreign institutions. “The new state that we are building in Hungary today is not a liberal state,” the WSJ quotes him as saying. “It doesn’t deny liberalism’s basic values such as freedom but doesn’t make it its core element. It uses a particular, national approach.”
