Hungary’s PM Orbán: Welfare State Thing Of Past

  • 28 Jul 2014 9:00 AM
Hungary’s PM Orbán: Welfare State Thing Of Past
The welfare state system has exhausted its reserves and is doomed to failure, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at the Bálványos summer university on Saturday. In his address, Orbán insisted that the welfare state, with its amassed debt, is no longer a sustainable model for Western European societies.

The prime minister said it was an obligation for incumbent leaders to set directions for the next 20-30 years, and warned against a “provincial copying of the West” which would “kill us”.

Orbán dismissed concerns raised over Hungary’s developing ties with Russia, and said it was “our greatest problem” that over two-thirds of Hungary’s exports were directed at EU markets.

He suggested that the ratio should be reduced to 50%, and the other half of the country’s export goods sold in “other places of the world”. He said that what was now happening in the relationship between Russian and the western world was very bad for Hungary.

It “would be in our interest” for Russia not to lose pace with western social development. On another subject, Orbán said he disagreed with the US diplomatic principle of promoting human rights in the world.

“Rather than reciting human rights theses, we should encourage actual, practical, and relations-based cooperation,” he said.

Source www.hungarymatters.hu

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