Viktor Orban: Let’s take the side of the people and protect them from illegal migration, terrorism and crime!
Without its nations, Europe would lose its spiritual and cultural identity, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said, addressing a European People’s Party (EPP) congress in Helsinki on Thursday.
“Europe will either be a Europe of nations or it will cease to exist,” Orban told the congress ahead of a vote on the lead candidate for the post of European Commission president.
The “accession of central European nations have made Europe more peaceful, stronger and richer”, he said. The continent’s strength has always been based on strong nations, he said.
Orban accused the liberals, socialists and greens of wanting a rootless Europe devoid of its spiritual and psychological identity. “Our vision is a Europe with 27 faces, one that is Christian and democratic simultaneously,” he said.
Orban called the EPP “a party of victors” which preferred keeping its feet on the ground rather than championing world-redeeming ideologies. “By now, however, the situation has changed,” he said.
Over the past few years, the EPP has given the leadership of Europe, so it has to take responsibility for “failure to keep Britain in the union and the migrants outside it.” While in 2011, sixteen member states were governed by EPP parties, now that number is down to six, he said. “No wonder our confidence has been shaken.”
“To return to the path to victory”, the EPP should restore its unity, find its roots again and proclaim the “renaissance of Christian democracy”, the prime minister said. “Absurdities like praising Fidel Castro or Karl Marx should be forgotten,” he added.
Orban warned that the EPP should not heed its adversaries and should not accept the standards of the left and the liberal media, he said. “If we try to live up to their expectations, we are doomed to fail,” he said.
The prime minister emphasised that the EPP should appreciate its successes. “Those who do not value their victors deserve failure,” he said. As the European elections are won in the member states, “the EPP as a victors’ party needs victorious prime ministers,” he said.
The key to success is to take the side of the people, Orban said. “Let’s protect them from illegal migration, terrorism, crime and economic hardship,” he said. “Let us once again put the old slogan on the banner: [a government]of the people, by the people, for the people”.
https://voiceofeurope.com/2018/11/viktor-orban-lets-take-the-side-of-the-people-and-protect-them-from-illegal-migration-terrorism-and-crime/