“It is easy to implement sanctions policy from Paris, Brussels, Madrid, but maybe even from Berlin,” he said, adding: “however, we are closer to the sanctioned country, Russia.”
He believed that those who are closer “always suffer more”, so there is nothing surprising in the fact that the Hungarian point of view is radically different from the one in Brussels. Moreover, the strong used to impose sanctions against the weak, but now “we Europeans, who are energy dwarfs, are imposing sanctions on an energy giant”, which is a completely unusual phenomenon in history, he explained.
The prime minister emphasized: “these sanctions are causing us very serious damage, they are bad, painful for us, they cost a lot of money, and they threaten to eat up a considerable part of our successes that we have achieved in the last ten years”. Because with the skyrocketing energy prices, “our foreign trade balance will deteriorate”, and then “the balance of payments will also deteriorate” –
So the sanction that “the Westerners invented” today does not serve Hungary’s interest, “in fact, it poses an extremely serious danger for us”. And the most worrying thing about the whole thing is that “while we are entering an increasingly serious economic crisis”, it is quite obvious that if the sanctions were repealed, the situation would immediately improve – he opined.
He added: so it’s not just that we are “suffering through a large, painful series of measures”, but that this could be reversed with a single move. Viktor Orbán stated: “Therefore, he will always argue in favor of the European Union not applying sanctions that hurt more here in Central Europe than the person they are applied to.