What follows is the English translation of a recent article by Gábor Bojár titled “Az én Európám,” which appeared in the April 18 issue of Élet és Irodalom. Gábor Bojár is a successful businessman and the founder of Graphisoft, AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) CAD company. Bojár started his career in the late 1970s at the state geophysics institute, but a few years later, when no more funding was available for his modeling software, he left to work abroad as a programmer. In 1982 he launched Graphisoft and served as its president-CEO until 2007, when it was acquired by the sector’s leading German company, Nemetschek AG.
Following the sale of Graphisoft, Bojár founded the Acquincum Institute of Technology, a school in Budapest for information technology and entrepreneurship, where young computer scientists from all over the world receive training.
I agree with Viktor Orbán. We agree that the stakes are higher in the coming European Parliamentary elections in May than ever before. They are even higher than they were in the parliamentary elections last year. Back then the fragmented, and according to many observers, partially co-opted opposition helped Fidesz to another two-thirds majority in parliament, what many of us perceived as Hungary’s great tragedy. But that seems to be a lesser blow than Europe falling apart again. Because that is what is at stake now. Europe’s future is not primarily threatened by immigrants, but by Viktor Orbán and his friends: Salvini’s Northern League, the German AfD, the French National Rally, the Austrian Freedom Party and other similarly euroskeptic, nationalist parties that are hell-bent on destroying the Union. One of them, UKIP, in implicit alliance with the euroskeptic wing of the British Conservative Party, has already succeeded in dealing the biggest blow to the EU in its current history by bringing Brexit and the ensuing chaos upon it.
For nearly three-fourths of a century there has been lasting peace in most of Europe, the most important achievement of the Union. It seems, though, that for some this unprecedentedly long peacetime has become too long to bear.
What Europe means to me
When I was a child I heard about the so-called European Coal and Steel Community on the radio, and I asked my father what it meant. This means, he said, that someday there will be a Europe without borders, and if we are a part of that Europe it won’t matter anymore if Transylvania is ours or the Romanians’, because it will belong to all of us, and there will be no more wars in Europe.
On April 30, 2004, five minutes before midnight, my wife and I were standing in the passport control queue that was reserved for EU citizens at the Fiumicino airport of Rome. The border guard looked at his watch and said firmly: five minutes to go! But then he smiled and waved us through. It was a beautiful moment. Since Hungary’s accession to the Schengen agreement, it is always a special experience to cross the Slovenian border on our way to our summer holidays. There are no more passport booths on the highway, no need to slow down, only a modest sign indicates on the side of the road that we have entered Slovenia. But a few years ago large metal barriers appeared by the side of the road with barbed wire on top, as if they were only waiting for the solemn instruction to block the road, when needed. This makes me sad.
I agree with the notion that Christianity is one of European civilization’s most valuable assets and every European citizen, regardless of their religion, can be rightfully proud of all the great masterpieces that have been accomplished in its name. That said, I equally value the ideals of the Enlightenment and secularism – even though the likes of Orbán would disagree -, and they are even more vulnerable to ferocious attacks by Islamic fundamentalists than Christianity itself. Of course, one must not conflate Islam as a whole with Islamic fundamentalism. Those who raise false alarms with such nonsense as “population exchange” only fuel islamophobic fundamentalism and inspire actions like Breivik’s mass murder of Norwegian children a few years ago, or the recent mass execution of peacefully praying Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand. These purportedly Christian extremists are as harmful as their Islamist counterparts are, and by strengthening the spiral of hatred, they are putting Europe’s values at peril just as much as those whom they think they are fighting against.
Of course, we do have to protect ourselves from the dangers of uncontrolled mass migration. Defending the Schengen borders is not just sensible, but we are legally bound to do it. Opinions to the contrary are only read into the statements of Europe’s democratic parties by Orbán and his friends. The Treaty of Geneva that protected hundreds of thousands of Hungarians in 1956, obliges every signatory state, including Hungary, to provide fair treatment and protection to every legitimate asylum seeker that arrives to their territory. However, it does not amount to a blanket support for uncontrolled mass migration. Nor does the idea of open societies equal the promotion of uncontrolled mass migration, not even according to George Soros.
What does the Union mean to me as a businessperson?
It means a lot more than the available grants to apply for, which – because of their market-distorting effects– often cause more harm than good.
At the time my former venture opened its first office in Silicon Valley in 1989, I had been working in the United States for an extended period of time. Soon enough I came to understand why the United States is in the forefront of the information revolution that is shaping our world today, even though the guiding principles for the operation of computers had been laid down in Europe and the 19th century ancestors of the modern computer had also been designed on the old continent. The simple reason for that is that every American company plans to operate in a vast, unified market of 300 million from the start. This is what they plan and obtain funding for. And what makes that market unified? A single currency, unified tax and legal systems, and an integrated business environment including all the regulations and standards.
The first steps towards integration have been taken here in Europe as well. There are no internal customs, therefore no internal customs checks either, a single currency is used in the euro zone, and there have been important steps taken towards harmonizing legal regimes. For instance, my former venture was considering going public in the mid-nineties, and we were aiming to get listed on a big international stock exchange. Our advisers thought it was essential for us to be incorporated under the legal system of a well-developed market economy, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to attract large international investors. For this, we had to establish a holding company in the Netherlands; the Hungarian firm kept operating as its subsidiary. Then the Dutch company’s shares were introduced on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange with stunning success. After 2004, however, when Hungary became a member of the EU, local incorporation ceased to be a significant issue. Membership in the Union, therefore, not only means that it is easier to leave one’s country, but it can also mean that it is easier to stay home. We transformed our company into the EU’s newly created legal form, the Societas Europae, which meant that the company could freely transfer its headquarters anywhere within the Union, and we could finally roll up the expensive office in Amsterdam and bring it home to Budapest, where it naturally belonged. From then on, we could list the firm on the Hungarian stock exchange and trade its shares in Hungary. To us, these were the main benefits of EU membership, and they meant much more than any potential subsidies, should we decide to apply for them.
One must also acknowledge, however, that these were only the first few hesitant steps towards the much-needed integration. The monetary union is moldering without a fiscal union, and the harmonization of legal systems is far from complete, especially without the consistent implementation of the rules. Because of this, among other reasons, the European economy is lagging behind its global challengers, including the emerging economic powerhouse of China.
What does the Union mean to Viktor Orbán?
Many share my earlier opinion that Orbán wants to lead Hungary out of the EU, and if it had been up to him, we would never have even joined. Let us remember his notorious statement from the time when he was leading the accession negotiations during his first term in power between 1998 and 2002: “There is life outside the Union.” I am convinced that this was not merely a negotiating tactic but a rare moment of honesty, with that sentence coming right from his heart. He does not tolerate limitations to his power. After the systematic degradation of the checks and balances that began in 2010, the EU is the last remaining counterweight to his power and he seeks to eliminate it. Some counter by saying that the boss and his cronies will not deny themselves the large amounts of money they can steal from the EU subsidies. I respectfully disagree. While it is true that the 4-6 percent of our national income that is coming from the EU is significant, there is potentially a lot more to steal from the remaining 94-96 percent, if only there were no interference from the EU, OLAF, and other meddlesome institutions. The disgusting and unprecedentedly intense campaign against Brussels that has been going on for years now builds on the worst xenophobic instincts, and I suspect that its real aim was to gain public support for leaving the Union.
But having seen that it did not yield the intended results – because Hungarians are in favor of EU membership to a much larger extent than Orbán had assumed – he changed his tactics. He now projects himself as the most genuine European, ferociously defending Europe from the Muslim hordes waiting to abuse our women and daughters. It is not hard to see that this is only a new strategy, one that is more effective than exiting the EU. He hopes that this will help him reach his true goal of freeing himself from the last remaining constraints on his power. The new strategy aims at destroying the EU from within.
His priority, which overrides everything, is therefore national sovereignty (which in practice means Orbán’s exclusive, personal sovereignty with the unprecedented concentration of power that took place in Hungary), which in effect amounts to the destruction of the EU itself. The chaos surrounding Brexit is a good example of what can happen when a politician – in this case, David Cameron, the former British prime minister – puts his own power ambitions above the interests of his nation.
Handling migration within national competence?
Not so long ago, I had a conversation at a reception about the desired way of handling migration with a Fidesz politician who had been competent in the matter by virtue of the office he held. I agreed with him that the EU, and Ms. Merkel in particular, had made a mistake during the height of the migration crisis when declaring “there is no upper limit,” thus escalating the influx of people to even higher levels. Since then, the German policy has become more rational, and the emphasis now is on finding solutions outside the borders of the EU. I then added that I still don’t understand that very pronounced component of the official Hungarian position: that migration-related policy competences must strictly remain with the national governments. I asked him whether he was in favor of free and uncontrolled movement within the Schengen borders. Naturally, yes, he answered. Then how do you imagine keeping migration control strictly in national hands? – I asked. How are these two questions related? – he countered. Let’s imagine, I answered, that Hungary is one of the richest members of the EU (however unlikely that situation would seem – but I did not add this), and another Schengen country, poorer and more liberal than us, say France, would open its borders to mass migration. All those people would begin to flow to Hungary, one of the most attractive countries in the EU. I did not get an answer. The politician politely said goodbye and vanished in the crowd at the reception.
Unfortunately, I know what the answer would have been. This scenario will never be a real threat to us. Not only are we not attractive enough, we don’t even want to be. The campaign against foreigners was not only aimed at domestic voters, but it sent a message to the outside world as well: don’t come here, we hate foreigners! Richer and more open societies should solve the problem in whatever way they can, but do not count on us! If the price for this is giving up Schengen, so be it. The Union is already crumbling anyway, whatever little power we have is best used to hasten the downfall. Then we wouldn’t even have to leave.
The fight against globalism
The 21st century presented us with new challenges to which there are simply no satisfactory answers within the parameters of the nation-state. The threat of climate change, international terrorism, the regulation and taxation of giant multinationals are but a few of the challenges that cannot be dealt with by countries acting alone. The information revolution has created entire industries with transnational service providers who can easily evade national regulations. And, of course, migration cannot be controlled within national competences, if we want to preserve the openness of our internal borders. The government propaganda is conspicuously silent about this, but the euroskeptics of the West are quite open about their plan: they think it would be best to reinstate controls at the internal borders.
One may not like globalization, but that process already started five hundred years ago with the great geographical discoveries, and accelerated at previously unimaginable speed with the information revolution, thus becoming irreversible. It is much like the weather; one must adapt to it. But why do we take it for granted that the biggest winner of globalization must necessarily be the United States, where an overwhelming majority of the population are in a constant disbelief that things work very differently in other parts of the world? Globalization means geographical democracy, and in our ever shrinking world small nations are presented with just as many new opportunities as the bigger ones. This is especially true to us, Hungarians, who had to learn the ability to adapt to our frequently changing environment through the storms of our history many times. For instance, with my former company we could beat our American, French and German rivals in third countries. Although they were much more powerful than us in their home markets, they had difficulties with their products, developed to serve their domestic markets, when adapting to the needs of different environments. In contrast, we were prepared from the beginning to adjust and adapt our software to the expectations of other cultures, because we had no sizable domestic market to rely on.
What is Hungary doing today to weaken the Union?
Hungary consistently vetoes everything that would serve the strengthening of the EU and stays away from every step of further integration. Needless to say, it will not join the Eurozone and declares in its new constitution that its currency is the Hungarian Forint. It refuses to join the European Prosecutor’s Office that was set up to curb the looting of EU funds. As a result, Hungary’s EU subsidies could be suspended, for good reasons. Naturally, we vetoed strengthening and expanding the powers of the common border protection agency, primarily designed to ease the pressure on the overburdened Greek, Italian and Spanish naval border protection agencies. Contrary to what is parroted over and over by the government propaganda, it wasn’t designed to let in asylum seekers en masse through the Hungarian-Serbian border. We even vetoed the initiative to set up registration centers outside Europe.
Orbán’s goal is not to solve the problem but to keep it indefinitely on the agenda, which in turn strengthens his domestic support. Of course, he is conspicuously silent about the fact that migration numbers have fallen to pre-crisis levels due to the agreements signed between the EU and third countries and to the end of the Syrian civil war. Migrants to Hungary are only brought in by our own government, as they move in tens of thousands of “migrants” with murky backgrounds through the settlement bonds program. These migrants in many cases pose real dangers to the Union, and the scheme is a vehicle to funnel gigantic amounts of public funds into the pockets of government cronies.
Putin’s Trojan Horse?
Not only is Hungary working to weaken the EU wherever it can, but it also aims to undermine NATO. We have vetoed Ukraine’s path toward joining NATO, citing Ukraine’s language law and its detrimental effect on the Hungarian minority as a pretext. It is harder to justify why we extradited the Russian arms smugglers, working against America, to Russia, when they were arrested in Hungary with American help. Why did a bank whose majority owner is the Russian state and which is managed by former KGB officials receive diplomatic immunity, a sort of extraterritorial status? Why do we shelter the former prime minister of Macedonia, who promoted Russian interests by working against NATO and the EU and who was convicted for corruption in his own country? Why do we float the idea of quitting NATO, citing Austria’s independence as an example? It is as if we forgot that Austrian independence was a product of a pact between East and West, but Austria’s western orientation was never called into question. And let’s not forget about the gigantic nuclear plant development in Paks, which was meant to reduce our dependence on Russian energy but instead ends up binding our homeland to Russia with many more ties. According to renowned experts, who are much more competent in this than I am, this development goes against broader market trends in the world, oblivious to the rapidly increasing share and falling costs of renewable sources of power, and exclusively serves Russia’s strategic objectives.
Orbán more and more openly acts as Putin’s Trojan Horse within the EU because he believes he would get a freer hand from Putin than from the Union. He also believes that he could get greater leverage by steering between the two powers instead of committing to one. There are some who believe in the politics of skillfully maneuvering between superpowers and in the possibility of preserving our independence by doing so. But except for a few short periods in our history, this has always been an illusion in this passageway land of the Carpathian Basin. In the last five hundred years we have almost always belonged to the sphere of influence of one great empire or another. This is an inevitable consequence of geography. And I sincerely believe that the sound majority of Hungarians would not choose the Russian empire over the EU. The generation that has direct experience of living under Russian dominion is still alive. We have heard from our parents and grandparents that the liberating Russian soldiers raped hundreds of thousands (!) of Hungarian women, leaving tens of thousands of children behind, ruining lives and families in their path. And when the allied leaders complained about this to Stalin, he said: “My soldiers have fought their way all across Europe, they deserve a little fun.” Are these the values and the culture we want to belong to?
Orbán frets that Brussels is building an empire, and he does not want that to happen. I hope he is right and Europe will build an empire that can stand up to the challenges of the Russian or the Chinese empire, and one that can be an equal ally to the American empire as well. Because we will inevitably belong to one of those empires. But unlike in the previous five hundred years when we could not decide ourselves, twenty-nine years ago we were given a chance to make our own choice. And we decided. Our prime minister wants to reverse that decision, because now he thinks that the sun is setting on the West. The future lies with the Eastern empires, because there are no unnecessary checks and balances constraining the boss’s power.
He did not always think that way. In 2007, at a Fidesz birthday event, he said the following exact words in his speech titled “Message to the Future”:
“We have opened the door to the West, and we have shown the door to the Russians, to the Soviet Union and to communism. Our message to the future is that you must not let them ever back in through the backdoor (…) Now that we have escaped the fate of being the soviet system’s happiest garrison, don’t let Hungary become Gazprom’s happiest garrison. (…) Our message to the youth is to keep Hungary aligned to the West. (…) Oil may be coming from the East, but freedom is always arriving from the West.”
Those who are interested in the whole speech (not too long) can see it here in Hungarian:
We can all make a a guess why his opinion changed, but I choose to believe the Viktor Orbán from 2007.
Fall of the West?
Analysts have predicted the fall of the West many times in the last two hundred years in the history of Western democracies. These democracies have often sunk into crises – they are currently in one as a matter of fact – but the real strength of these democracies is the ability to heal themselves, unlike those authoritarian regimes that sprang up from wrong answers to the crises, such as communism or fascism, among others. These regimes all collapsed upon their first serious military or economic defeat.
We are sometimes prone to forget that liberal democracies made the industrial revolution happen, which then, despite its controversies and crises, brought unprecedented prosperity and developments to humankind, for instance in the fields of public health, life expectancy, free and accessible public schooling and public safety, just to name a few outside the economic domain. Today, liberal democracies face new challenges brought upon them by the information revolution, starting with fake news through new methods of manipulation to the polarization of information. Some say the third world war is already being waged in cyber space and that Russian hackers appear to be the most powerful in it. Possibly. But a few decades ago Russians seemed to be winning the fight to conquer space with their rockets, but the West regained the initiative and the Americans landed on the moon. Then the Americans won the race to build rocket defense systems, the so-called Star Wars, and the Soviet Union fell.
The strength of liberal democracy feeds on individual creativity and innovative energy in all of us, which it can unleash more effectively than any other system before it; and with smart regulation and incentives it can harness its power for the benefit of the community in addition to individual gains. Some argue against this reasoning by citing the example of China, which obviously cannot be regarded as a liberal democracy. But I believe China owes its success to being much more liberal and democratic today than it once was in the time of Mao. And those six hundred thousand young people who have already left have settled in the West, not in the East, to exploit their talent.
I sincerely believe that the liberal democracies of the West will find their way out of the crisis and that they will win in cyber space eventually, as they are the ones who created the information revolution that is changing our world more profoundly than the industrial revolution once did. And to this, we Hungarians can make a valuable contribution with our several hundred years’ tradition of world-class mathematics.
I trust that Orbán and his friends will not succeed in destroying or even weakening the EU. While it is true that Brexit dealt a significant blow to the Union in economic and defense terms alike, without the traditionally euroskeptic British the integration process may gain new momentum again, which may even lead to strengthening the Union in the end. The “two-tier Europe” is taking shape now, within which there will be a core-Europe, a truly integrated community. And we may be left out of this core-Europe. Everything that Orbán is doing today may just be enough for that. We may end up in the periphery, whose operations will not be too rigorously controlled by the core. The core’s primary aim will be maintaining order in its periphery, and it will be a secondary concern for them whether that is done within an autocracy or a democracy. However, we will still be better-off in the periphery than we would be without a strong core-EU coming into existence and the whole EU falling apart instead. Because then, we would have nothing to protect us from the worst: war.
This is the reason why the stakes are much higher in the coming EP elections than ever before in our lifetime.
There is hope
Fidesz’s gravest sin is what it’s doing to the people’s souls: stoking hatred in the minds of a naturally peaceful and welcoming nation. However, I believe that this nation is still healthy and that the sound majority – including conservative, liberal or socialist leaning voters – is growing tired of having to hate somebody all the time, be it Brussels, migrants or George Soros.
Even though almost all channels of mass communication are controlled by Fidesz and, according to pollsters, Fidesz still enjoys the support of around half of the electorate, I believe there is hope against all odds. Many believe the reason behind Fidesz’s high popularity is the deeply unpopular opposition. In the coming election, however, it doesn’t matter which opposition party’s list we cast our votes for because what we are really voting on is where we want to belong. Instead of helping any particular opposition party to power, our vote will be a strong affirmation of our European identity. Since every opposition party agrees – even Jobbik – that we want to belong to the West, the vote for any of them is a vote for Europe and a vote against Fidesz’s efforts to undermine a strong European Union. Therefore, what really matters is the total number of votes that the opposition receives, regardless of how many seats that will yield them in the European Parliament. If in this election we manage to deprive Fidesz of a majority in the vote count, the hope to join core-Europe one day may still be alive
The few Hungarian opposition seats may not matter much in the new European Parliament, but showing of the will of the Hungarian people — where we want to belong — does.
I have only one thing to ask of the opposition parties: now is the time to focus all effort on the EP elections and the mobilization of their voters. Tell them what is really at stake now, and don’t let political talk be dominated by the municipal elections this fall. I do understand that for the parties municipal seats matter more than the one or two seats they could win in the European Parliament. However, it would be desirable to place our nation’s interest above that of the party for once. It is my conviction that the voters will appreciate this more than the haggling among the parties over municipal positions. The nation’s primary interest is to let the Hungarians show that they stand with Europe and against Putin’s lieutenant in Europe. This truly is a matter of national destiny at this point.