All Hungarians must be winners of EU-accession

Fidesz on the results of the Hungarian referendum

Dátum: 2003-04-15 09:23:00, eredeti URL: http://archiv.fidesz.hu/index.php?Cikk=9377
KCMDB-be feltöltve: 2024-05-04 18:13:04.663864, Feltöltő: fidesz_hu_scraper_v2

At yesterday's historic referendum, 84 percent of Hungarians voted in favour of Hungary's EU-accession. It finally opened the way, more than thirteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, for Hungary's return to the European community of nations, separated from by fourty years of communism.

However, the government's costly, unprofessional and ineffective campaign led to Hungary being the candidate country with the lowest turnout rate (45,5 %) at an EU-accession referendum in the last thirty years. Instead of concentrating on providing information for the public on membership, the government pursued a propaganda reminding us of the pre-1989 period. Hungarians are interested in concrete facts rather than whether they will be allowed to open a confisserie in Vienna, as highlighted on one of the government's campaign billboards. Fidesz has pursued a dialogue with citizens on EU-accession, in spite of the fact that the government allocated no financial resources for the parties in their referendum campaign.

Fidesz is of the opinion that, regardless of all this, the question from now on is not whether Hungary will or will not join the EU. We are all going to be citizens of the European Union: those who voted YES, those who voted NO, and those who abstained, as well. The debate between the yes-voters and the no-voters should therefore not be escalated. The genuine question is whether all Hungarians can be made winners of the process: farmers, small entrepreneurs, pensioners and the younger generations.

Today, Hungarians await membership with confidence. However, not all of us will be automatically winners in the process. The situation is similar to the period preceding the fall of communism in Hungary some thirteen years ago. Back then, a significant portion of the society experienced a fall in its living standards in the process of laying the groundwork of democratic institutions and establishing a market economy. There is a fear that the ones who lost then are now the potential losers again. Steps must be taken in order that this should not happen, as every single Hungarian has payed the price of EU-accession, yes-voters and no-voters alike.

The bulk of the work is therefore ahead of us. We have one year left until Hungary's full accession, and it is up to the government to secure that the citizens' hopes be realised. Nationwide support and development programmes and projects must therefore be drafted and implemented with the aim of carrying across the potential losers of accession to the winning side. It is worth noting that Fidesz was the only party to have drafted a sixty-page action plan approved at the extraordinary party congress last December, which detailed the measures that must be taken in this last phase of the accession period.

The force of cohesion keeping us together is not the fact whether we voted with yes or with no, but the fact that we are Hungarians and we would all like to be winners. In the EU, our job will be to pursue the implementation of our national interests to the greatest extent possible, regardless of political adherence. For we can now say with confidence that Europe is our future, but let us not forget that Hungary remains our homeland.

13 April 2003