Speech by Mr Viktor Orbán at the Gala Dinner of EPP

Dátum: 2003-05-07 12:40:00, eredeti URL: http://archiv.fidesz.hu/index.php?Cikk=10207
KCMDB-be feltöltve: 2024-05-04 18:18:16.662233, Feltöltő: fidesz_hu_scraper_v2

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Friends,

It is an honour and special pleasure to be here today with you to celebrate together the Europe of 25. As I was preparing to come here, it came to my mind that the first time I came to Brussels and West Europe was in 1984. At that time, one could only leave Hungary by permission once in three years and one could only take 300 USD with himself. Portable heaters designed in Moscow and distributed in the armed forces of the Warsaw Pact, as well as Hungarian-made canned food were hiding in our backsacks. Good old days! I remember the difficult dilemma: shall we stay in the free world? Shall we stay here, or shall we return home to the world ruled by the Warsaw Pact, by the socialist planned economy, and by dull party apparatchiks? For 45 years after the second world war, all generations had to tackle with the same question:shall we choose the free world, or our homeland? Shall we choose liberty, or parents and friends? Shall we leave or shall we stay?

Like in the old story in which two snails crawl along one side of the road, and one says to the other: “Let's cross the road." The other replies: “That is impossible. You have to be born there."

We, Hungarians are glad not to have any more reasons to think like snails. So, as for us, we made a good deal with the enlargement. And I am convinced that you have made a good bargain as well. Hungarians would say that if you have a Hungarian friend, you don't need enemies.

Anyway, we all have good reasons to celebrate and to congratulate to each other.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Friends,

It is fashionable nowadays to speak about Old Europe and New Europe. I would like to remind you that the currently accessing countries, with Hungary among them, joined a Christian Europe a thousand years ago. Although it is only now that we join the European Union, we do belong to the Old Europe. We, Old European nations know well that what links the nations of the continent is certainly not globalisation, but the appreciation of Christian values.

We are members of the European People´s Party, because we are convinced that all this does not only represent the past but is a mission for the future. Unfortunately, EU-accession is often exclusively percieved by the new member states as a source of welfare, whereas current members think of it as an economic burden. However, reunification is a spiritual event, or at least we would like it to be one. We believe that all of us here today are united by our vision and action toward a society founded on the better side of human nature.

This means, that it is our common responsibilty to implement policies which are based on the noble inclinations of human nature: such as responsibility, generosity, work, family, honesty.

This also means, on the other side, that we have to work on blocking policies which are based on the dark side of the human character. Policies based on greed, lust, selfishness, violence, the culture of entitlement, relativity of values, consumerism.

The spiritual renewal implies that Europe's re-unification is the right moment for Central Europe, coming from under the red dictatorship, to face the vices of the past. As Western Europe shows us good example, Europe's new future cannot be built on a distorted history.

The joint efforts by which we managed to reunite the Old Continent, strengthened us in our belief that the future is not something we enter, but something we create.

I wish to all of us that the period ahead be the age of a spiritual renewal for a reunited Europe.

Thank you for your attention.