Most Friday mornings, Hungary’s Prime Minister gives an interview on one of the public radio stations. Since the independent media has not had a chance to interview him for several years, these weekly radio interviews provide a rare opportunity for finding out what the leader of the country thinks about current events, how he sees his opponents and any issues at hand.
"The Interior Ministry is on the job, they are conducting an investigation. I'm still uncertain about the outcome of all this, because Hungary is not the only country where this has happened,"
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in his usual Friday morning interview on Kossuth Rádió's Good Morning, Hungary programme about Thursday's nationwide bomb threats. In total, police searched more than 300 schools before the end of the day, and found no explosive devices anywhere. He reiterated that he was on a "hotline" with Interior Minister Sándor Pintér throughout the day. Orbán said the state was doing its job, and added that as he sees it, 'one fool makes many' but that all students, teachers and parents are safe.
He said that such an event could be settled with a shrug if there were no acts of terror committed in Western Europe.
"The most important thing is that migrants should not be allowed in," he said, noting that the EU's migration pact is "a death threat" for Hungary.
After Thursday’s bomb threats, he went on to comment on the effects of Donald Trump's inauguration as US president. He said:
“We are back on the high street of Europe, we are the new mainstream.”
Trump had already set some things right when he declared that "the father is male, the mother is female, bingo", Orbán said, referring to one of the executive orders of the new US president. He also talked about his conviction that the US and Central Europe now "have Brussels in a vise".
“I could also say that we've sandwiched them, because one tends to think of sandwiches before breakfast.”
– the Prime Minister said.
"The Ukrainians are trying to mess with us", Orbán said, switching to the Russian-Ukrainian war and the topic of gas supplies. He said that what the Ukrainians are doing is pushing prices up.
"If the Ukrainians were not messing with us, energy prices would not be where they are, and petrol would not be so expensive either," he said, adding that 7,500 billion forints had been taken away from us with the introduction of the sanctions. He said that he had asked for the opening of the gas transport routes, the closure of which had caused energy prices to rise in Hungary. Orbán is trying to "convince our friends in Brussels" to persuade the Ukrainians that the Hungarians shouldn't be the ones footing the bill for the sanctions.
“All it takes is a phone call: dear Ukrainian comrades, open the valves.”
– the Prime Minister said, but added that he did not want to lament because he believed 2025 would be a fantastic year, and thus turned to the economic situation, Orbán said that "we have a robust middle class" because Hungarian families have 90,000 billion forints in savings, and stressed that in terms of savings, Hungary ranks 13th in the European Union.
"212,000 people went on a winter holiday! We can deduct four from that, because I also went on holiday."
– Orbán said, citing tourism figures, and calling for a "stop to this mumbo jumbo" about Hungary not doing well. "We're off, at cruising speed, and then we'll sprint!" – he said.
Viktor Orbán avoids critical questions at home. It’s been years since he gave an interview to independent media. However, for several years, most Friday mornings he has been a regular guest on state-owned Kossuth Rádió, where he is interviewed by a lead editor of the public broadcasting service (operating from an annual budget of 320 million euros). Katalin Nagy has been almost exclusively the one allowed to interview Orbán on the state-owned channel throughout his third and fourth term with a two-thirds majority in parliament. She has received the state decoration of the Cross of the Order of Merit of Hungary and doesn’t shy away from asking questions.