A New European Era

Mr Viktor Orbán was one of the special guests of the two-day European Youth Congress organized in Leipzig, Germany. The chairman of Fidesz held three lectures at the conference entitled "Responsibility and Freedom in a United Europe".

Created: 28th September, 2007 15:38 \| Last updated: 8th November, 2007 19:59	print	send

The event, organized by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation was attended, among others, by former Chancellor of Germany, Helmut Kohl and Hans-Gert Pöttering, chairman of the European Parliament. Several thousand people participated at the conference.

In his speeches given on Friday and Saturday, Viktor Orbán addressed first the youth then held his exposé before political analysts and politicians of the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and of the federal state of Saxony. "Freedom" was a key concept in both of his lectures, being one of the most important common European values.

One of the central elements of his speeches was that in Hungary, the ideas of freedom and love belonged together, therefore he observed the concept of liberty from a human perspective. Mr Orbán recalled that at least two people are needed for freedom. An individual by itself means loneliness, while this freedom shared by two people means mutual responsibility. Consequently from the human aspect, freedom meant responsibility towards the other person, the family and the nation.

Turning towards the younger audience of mainly 18 to 25 years of age, most of who have not lived during the years preceding the democratic transition, the chairman of Fidesz talked about the three rebirths of Europe in the past six decades. The first one was when the European Union was founded, creating the "Europe of peace". The second took place in the early 90s, following the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany, establishing the united Europe. We now live a new European era, said Mr Orbán, a rebirth which sets out to construct a strong Europe that would be able to remain competitive on a global scale.

The idea of a strong Europe, however, means a return to the principles of social market economy, in which both competitive economy and mutual responsibility are present, concluded the leader of Fidesz. Viktor Orbán held his final lecture on Saturday, alongside with Helmut Kohl and Hans-Gert Pöttering.

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