Evaluation of the year speech: no word at all on competitiveness

HUNGARY - In Brief 10 Feb 2019 by Istvan Racz

---

PM Orbán held his usual evaluation of the year speech today, which is his version of a state of the nation speech, delivered usually at some point around this time each year. Expectations were raised this time by official and semi-official indications, according to which the prime minister would have spoken of some structural reforms that are necessary to raise competitiveness and keep GDP growth around 4% p.a. over medium term. Indications that this would happen came from a number of sources including Mr. Orbán himself, finance minister Varga and others.However, in reality Mr. Orbán did not speak about competitiveness in any specific terms, and in general, his message was going in a different direction. In a rather logical way, given existing political circumstances, he delivered a campaign speech for the late-May European election, in which he explained his position regarding immigration, his version of the EU masterminds' alleged intentions to destroy Christian cultures around Europe should parties like Fidesz not win, explained in what way Frans Timmermans, the European Commission's vice-president was the man of George Soros and the main advocate of mass immigration into Europe in Brussels, and addressed a few similar subjects.In terms of the economy, he restricted himself to:- modifying the government's GDP growth target to 2 percentage points above EU GDP growth in any year, which will be certainly easier to meet if the EU economy weakens;- announcing HUF700bn of spending on the development of health care facilities, mainly hospitals, over an unclear period of time; and- announcing a seven-point demography program, to increase the domestic birth rate, with unclea...