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| Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on the balcony of his office at the Hungarian Parliament, November 19. |
BUDAPEST — “Of course it’s not accepted, but the factual point is that all the terrorists are basically migrants,” says Viktor Orbán. “The question is when they migrated to the European Union.”
In his office at the Hungarian parliament, the prime minister points toward the flowing Danube. In another era, an aide notes, the Turks followed this river into the heart of Europe. Behind Orbán hang two maps: One shows a short stretch of Hungary’s border with Croatia and another gives a panoramic view of the Balkans toward Turkey, from where hundreds of thousands of migrants have made their way north this year.
In a wide-ranging 90-minute interview a week after the Paris terrorist attacks, Orbán lays out his prescriptions for Europe’s ailments: An impenetrable external border to boost security and save the Schengen treaty on passport-less travel within the EU; a new EU constitutional convention that strengthens the power of nation states and weakens Brussels; and normalized relations with Russia.
Thinking of Paris and its aftermath, the Hungarian leader posits an “overwhelming logical” connection between terrorism and the movement of Muslims into Europe — in the last few months as well as over recent decades — that to him and many Europeans is “an obvious fact,” whether “you like it or not.”
“The majority of our leaders in the West deny the fact,” he adds. That denial of the “obvious” — which the Hungarian leader blames on political correctness run amok — destabilizes European politics by increasing “the gap between the leaders and the people.” Read on and comment » | Matthew Kaminski | Monday, November 23, 2015
