The Budapest Forum for Building Sustainable Democracies represents a foreign policy conference The opening remarks for Wednesday afternoon's session were delivered by David Pressman, the U.S. Ambassador to Budapest.
“Don't look at what the government says, look at what it does.”
“It was the advice he gave the ambassador before he arrived at his station in Budapest,” David Pressman recalled at the beginning of his talk. The former U.S. diplomat, he added, had implicitly accepted that the Hungarian government was saying something different than it was doing, and was willing to go beyond rhetorical exaggerations.
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However, according to the ambassador, the Hungarian government's rhetoric and actions are increasingly in sync – which is worrying.
“We have reached the point that at a conference on democracy in Budapest, as well as in Washington, more and more people are asking whether Hungary is still a democracy.”
David Pressman noted.
In this regard, he referred to the activities of the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty, which targeted the two pillars of democracy, the free press and civil society, in its first investigations.
“The Office for the Protection of Sovereignty protects something, but it is not Hungary's sovereignty.”
The ambassador announced.
Using the example of Gabor Ivanyi, he also points out that government rhetoric and offensive campaigns against the state press have very real consequences, both from a legal and existential standpoint.
Finally, David Pressman referred to his speech half a year ago, which he delivered on the anniversary of Hungary’s accession to NATO. The ambassador at the time asked the Hungarian leadership to move the relationship between the two countries in the direction of “a commitment to transparency, dialogue, neutrality and democracy.”
“The past six months have clearly shown what the Hungarian government has chosen – not to commit to transparency, impartiality and democracy.”
“The actions of the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty, Viktor Orban’s visit to Moscow, and the actions against Gabor Ivanyi all took place in these six months,” Pressman said, noting that “this is not the balance of a decade.”
The ambassador warned the Hungarian leadership that the excuse of “just words” is no longer valid. If the Hungarian government expects that if Donald Trump wins, everything will return to normal in relations between the two countries, this is a dangerous game. He spoke about the fact that a strategic alliance should not be limited to a personal alliance between two strong figures. “If the presidential elections do not go according to their expectations, the Hungarian government will not have a Plan B. This is not rational,” the ambassador said.
“What we were able to achieve in the blink of an eye before, we must now take into account. We must take the words of the Hungarian government seriously and act accordingly.”
David Pressman concluded by reiterating his earlier warning that the United States will not passively watch the actions of the Hungarian leadership that undermine Western federal systems and Hungarian democracy.
