Photo: MNB
Levente Horváth
08/01/2025 06:00
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán began his speech at the Budapest Eurasia Forum by praising the work of György Matolcsy, Governor of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank, the central bank of Hungary, adding that the Forum was a worthy reflection of this work. The prime minister recalled that György Matolcsy laid the foundations of modern Hungarian economic policy as minister of economy, later implemented an active central bank strategy, and provided new approaches, new ideas and appropriately deep analysis of new phenomena on the horizon, thus helping the government to develop economic strategy.
The prime minister recalled that the lesson he had drawn after the 2008-2009 financial crisis was that the West was no longer capable of operating its previously successful self-correcting mechanisms, while the new centres emerging in the world, and especially in Asia, showed that modernity was no longer an exclusive Western category, "it is possible to be modern in an Eastern way".
"The essence of politics is a sense of timing", Viktor Orbán warned, adding that while large countries can afford the luxury of missing the right moment to make the necessary decisions, "for a country the size of Hungary, bad timing is fatal".
Eurasian unity
According to the prime minister, the most important assertion of his speech was that "the changes we are seeing today are not simply a realignment, but a return to an earlier condition". To illustrate this, he recalled that on the wall of his office there are three world maps: the one we all know, Europe-centred, one America-centred and one Asia-centred. If you look at the latter, you can see that Europe is a small peninsula, an integral part of Asia. Although it is not necessarily obvious from Europe, Europe and Asia, or Eurasia, are "an organic geographical entity completely free of physical boundaries".
According to Viktor Orbán, three factors have hindered Eurasia's ability to exist as an economic entity in recent centuries. The first is that the centre of gravity of world trade has shifted to the seas. The second is that, as a result of this shift, Western civilisation has achieved a dominant status. Hence the third factor, which is a modern phenomenon. "after the Cold War the Western elites decided that they did not want to restore this organic unity, but to westernise the whole world. (...) The most brutal example of this – and the most obvious failure that we can all remember – was the Arab Spring".
The end of liberal dominance
However, the era of "liberal, progressive dominance" in the Western world is now over, Viktor Orbán said. The idea that "the idea that the whole world should be organised along Western lines, and that the peoples chosen to undergo this would be willing to comply in exchange for economic advantages, financial advantages" has failed. Today, "states of Asia have strengthened and have shown that they are capable of rising, existing and enduring as an independent economic and political power centre".
Moreover, the aforementioned approach is fading out in the Western world itself. "Issues have arisen for which the liberal, progressive-dominated mindset has no response. Such are migration, the whole gender ideology related to traditional values, ethnic antagonisms, or the war now in progress", Viktor Orbán said.
"As a result of the West’s loss of confidence, five hundred years of Western civilisational dominance have come to an end," he said, summing up the developments. "At the end of the Cold War the West accounted for half of the world’s economic output; today it accounts for 30 per cent, and the Eastern power centres account for 34 per cent. If you do not believe in ideas, then believe in numbers," he noted.
There are four reasons why the renaissance of Eurasia is back on the political agenda, according to the prime minister. First, Eurasia is the largest contiguous landmass on the planet. Second, it has the advantage of permanence, because "the political and trading players in this region are stable". "We have stable groups of peoples, territories, states, tribes and cultures. We know one another," he explained. The third advantage is that Eurasia has always been made up of several civilisations, which "have cross-fertilised one another in the more fortunate periods of history". And finally, the numbers: it is home to 70% of humanity, three quarters of the world's leading science clusters, 15 of the world's 20 largest financial centres, and this region is also preeminent in possessing and processing the minerals that are critical to this technology.
Orbán said that Europe is unable to find its place in this in this context of thought because Western leaders find it hard to give up their "sense of superiority". Europe today is the loser in a changing world, as is shown by the fact that "a European economy no longer features among the five largest economies in the world". Yet the West is "set on defending the status quo", as is shown by the fact that the European Union has declared China a systemic rival.
The prime minister stressed that Hungary has not entered this competition and does not agree with the attitude that Europe is classifying a different civilisation as a competitor or a challenge. Especially in the light of the fact that the European economy is not growing. This downward spiral will continue, according to the prime minister, if Europe refuses to move from bloc-building to connectivity.
Hungarian strategy
Europe, and Hungary in particular, must exploit all the advantages of being part of the Eurasian region, but we cannot wait for Europe to develop this strategy. "Hungary must be ready, it must accept the fact that the period ahead of us will be the century of Eurasia, we must define our place in it ourselves, and not derive it from a European strategy", the Prime Minister explained, adding that the good news is that we do have such a strategy. From the outside, this can be seen mainly in the form of clashes and disputes, but in fact all our conflicts with Brussels stem from the fact that Hungary has its own strategy, which is based on the new reality, and "which seeks, defines and finds Hungary’s place in this strategy – regardless of what Brussels’ doctrine might be".
The prime minister also said that this does not marginalise the fact that Hungary is a member of NATO and must also define itself in relation to the United States. Orbán said that it would certainly be easier to establish good relations with the new US administration than with the previous one.
To sum up, the prime minister said that Hungary occupies a favourable position in Eurasia, and Hungary's strategy is based on this recognition. The century of Eurasia could also be a positive one for Hungary because "we are the living idea of Eurasia," since the Hungarians came from Asia and then became a Western, European people. "The world economy and the European economy are finally facing a fortunate period which will also give Hungary a historic opportunity for development", Viktor Orbán said, adding that conferences such as the Budapest Eurasia Forum are also necessary for this success.
The author is editor-in-chief of Eurasia