Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told public Kossuth Radio that everybody was afraid of the Indian variant of the virus and added that all the vaccines administered in Hungary without exception were able to combat it.
He described reports claiming that several EU member states would not allow entry for people inoculated with eastern vaccines as fear-mongering. “Many countries are not yet discussing travel options because they are still far from it but Hungary is signing a series of bilateral agreements that will enable free movement,” Orbán said. A common European Union vaccination card might be available in July and it will oblige all member countries to allow entry for people inoculated with EU approved vaccines, he said. The countries will have the option to also accept other vaccines and “no country will want to block itself from tourists”, he added.
The next task now is to relaunch the country’s economy, Orbán said. When the pandemic was at its peak, enacting measures to protect the economy was also important to save jobs and incomes, however, with the third wave “having been floored”, the focus must shift from protection to restarting the economy, he added. Orbán said the 2022 budget would be dedicated to these efforts, adding that second-quarter figures for this year were already promising.
Commenting on an EU summit held this week, he said everybody agreed on the importance of climate protection but the positions varied on how the burdens should be distributed. Different countries cannot bear the same amount of burden, he said. The idea to make people pay the costs of climate protection might sound natural in the west where good living standards allow ample space of manoeuvring for this but Hungary cannot and does not want to make people pay an extra tax for this purpose after several years dedicated to efforts to lower public utility fees. Orbán said it was unacceptable “to spread around” the costs of climate protection. Central European countries believe it is mostly the large companies that are responsible for damaging the climate and people should not be made to pay the price. The next two or three years will be dedicated to climate protection, he said, adding that efforts to reduce utility costs would also have to continue.
He also said that he had met the leader of Spain’s right-wing VOX party on Thursday and discussed issues that have recently been suppressed by the fight against the pandemic, such as climate protection and illegal migration. When Hungary decided in 2015 to build a fence along its southern border, Spain was among the critics, but now they have a higher fence erected on their border than Hungary, he added. An upcoming and serious party has now strengthened the group of anti-migration forces, he said referring to VOX.
Commenting on his upcoming meeting with UK counterpart Boris Johnson in London later in the day, Orbán said he will “seek special areas of cooperation”.
Orbán noted that the UK and countries in central Europe have common views on issues such as reducing bureaucracy and standing up for national sovereignty and said their position had been weakened by the UK’s departure from the European Union. “[The UK] hasn’t left Europe, just the EU, so they’re still here. The question is: where will their place in the world be? They’re negotiating with everybody, establishing bilateral relations. We too have to establish a British-Hungarian trade and economic cooperation,” Orbán said.
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