Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Prime Minister Orbán gave me and the Minister of State, Deputy Helen McEntee, quite a lot of time. There was an opportunity for the two of us to understand, parse and analyse his philosophy a little better. Essentially, he believes in four pillars: Christianity, the Hungarian nation, the family and competitiveness. Even though his party is part of the same political family as mine, it is fair to say we are at the opposite ends of the internal spectrum. We are more secular, globalist and internationalist and have a wider view of what family means, but we are very much aligned with Mr. Orbán's party on issues surrounding economics and competitiveness. As Deputy Seán Haughey pointed out, Hungary and Ireland share the same view on tax. In fact, it has a lower corporation tax rate than we do and will certainly be an ally of ours in opposing any attempt to remove tax sovereignty from member states. We have a similar view on Brexit and the western Balkans and share a view that the European budget should be well funded and continue to provide adequate structural funds in central and eastern Europe and adequate funds for the Common Agricultural Policy.

There are many issues on which we are aligned, but we were certainly able to discuss in detail issues on which we were not. There were no meetings held with anyone else in Hungary. I met the Prime Minister and then finished for the night and flew on to Bulgaria for further meetings. I did raise the issue of non-governmental organisations, NGOs. Mr. Orbán pointed out that the matter was before the European Court of Justice. Hungary believes it will win the case. One of the things it is pointing out - this may be of interest to Members of this House - is that Ireland has laws which ban NGOs from receiving foreign money for referenda and campaigns. I do not believe it is quite the same thing, but it is interesting that it is part of Hungary's defence. By the way, I did tell Mr. Orbán that I did not think it was the same thing. On university laws, Mr. Orbán pointed out that all of the other foreign universities had accepted the new laws. On the judiciary and the media, he pointed out that those cases were closed as far as the European Commission was concerned. The Commission is satisfied that Hungary has complied and responded to European concerns about judicial and media freedom. I anticipate that Poland will also respond to European concerns, thereby avoiding a situation where we would have to impose sanctions on it. We profoundly disagreed on the issue of migration. We are accepting quotas of refugees, Hungary is not. While we profoundly disagreed on the issue, we did agree that the Dublin Convention system was not working.

To pick up on Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett's comments, he is right. I do believe in engagement and I am not going to depart from that belief. However, I am also not naive in respect of the move away from liberal democracy which is under way in central and eastern Europe. It is something about which I am very concerned. However, I ask the Deputy to avoid double standards. I have heard people from his political movement, if not him, laud the Bolívarian revolution that happened in Venezuela some years ago. We all see what is happening there now. Democracy is being totally undermined and the country is in slow collapse as can be seen in the rise in the incidence of infant mortality.

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