Hungarian PM Orban endorses Donald Trump’s security proposals

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Saturday said Donald Trump had proposed security policies that Europe should take to heart to solve its own security crisis which is rooted in uncontrolled immigration.

Speaking at a summer university in Baile Tusnad, Romania, the outspoken Hungarian leader again tied increased security threats to increased migration and cited Trump’s proposals at the Republican National Convention to combat terrorism.

Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president on Thursday with a speech that outlined an increased intelligence effort, an end to a “failed policy of nation-building and regime change” and a total suspension of immigration from states “compromised by terrorism.”

Orban sought to buttress his own security proposals with those points.

“I am not a Donald Trump campaigner,” he said in the televised speech. “I never thought I would ever entertain the thought that of the open options he would be better for Europe and for Hungary.

“But I listened to the candidate and and I must tell you he made three proposals to combat terrorism. And as a European I could have hardly articulated better what Europe needs.”

Orban said that Europe too needs to create a network of national intelligence agencies that ranks with the world’s best.

“The second thing, said this valiant American Presidential candidate, is to abandon the policy of exporting democracy,” Ortban said. “I could not have said it more precisely.”

Orban said Western countries acted recklessly to remove the undemocratic but stable regimes in Libya, Syria and Iraq without guaranteeing stability in the aftermath, exposing Europe to a mass wave of migration.

Worse, he said, instead of supporting the regimes that try to control the civil-war-torn countries in North Africa and the Middle East, Europe criticizes them for democratic shortfalls.

“If we keep prioritizing democracy over stability in regions where we are unlikely to succeed with that, we will create instability, not democracy. That is the big lesson with regard to the current events in Turkey, too.”

“Of course we are not indifferent to the quality of politics there, or to human rights,” Orban said. “But the top priority is for Turkey to stay stable because if it destabilizes, tens of millions of people from that region will flood Europe without any filter, control or obstacle.”

(Reporting by Marton Dunai Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)