Hungary will extend the ban on the import of Ukrainian grain on its own authority, alongside Romania, Poland and Slovakia, if Brussels fails to take appropriate action, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview to public radio on Friday. Orbán complained about “Brussels bureaucrats” who were unwilling to extend the ban which expires at midnight. “If they don’t extend it by midnight, then … we will extend the import ban on our own national authority, which will mean a serious fight in Brussels,” he said. He said the European Union was “unwilling to side with member states and the European people”, and instead followed US interests when it came to the issue of grain. The prime minister insisted that “Ukrainian grain is not really Ukrainian but a commercial product from land that the United States likely owned a long time ago”. This, he added, put a different complexion on the debate about who would win or lose the war. “It’s sure America will win and Europe will lose,” he declared.
Meanwhile, he called it a personal goal of his to make sure that families with children are financially better off than those without, and that young people are not deterred from having children because of financial difficulties. Europe does not have a common demographic policy, he noted. “That’s why we hold forums like yesterday and today’s Demographic Summit in Budapest: to convince decision-makers to put this issue on the agenda, too,” the prime minister added. Thanks to the family policy the government introduced in 2010, 160,000 more children were born, he said.
Orbán said that what was at stake in next year’s European Parliament elections was whether or not there would be an EU leadership that sought peace, whether it would isolate itself or cooperate with other regions of the world, whether it was able to stop migration, would abandon “gender propaganda” and support families and childbearing instead. Also at stake was whether it would ditch “double standards” applied to Poland and Hungary, he added.