Hungary stands ready to build a new Central Europe with its neighbours, including Romania, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday, marking the 30th anniversary of the outbreak of the Romanian revolution in the Timisoara Chamber of Commerce in western Romania.

In his speech, the Hungarian prime minister outlined his goal to turn Central Europe into one of the world s most successful and competitive regions, where cities are connected with motorways and high-speed trains, where „everyone would have a job, and where those who had left to work abroad would willingly return”. In that future, the difficulty would be „in deciding what to do with guest workers coming from western Europe,” Viktor Orban said.

„If we cooperate, all this becomes possible, making it the new reality for Europe,” he added.

Orban stressed that Hungary wants to break out of the cycle of being a „secondary country” in Europe. It wants to be a place where it s a priviledge to live and work; a country that strives to use future technologies in mass production and seeks to create the cleanest natural environment. Viktor Orban said Hungary wants to remain one of the safest countries in the world, adding that the work of Hungarian people should be worth at least as much as the work of those who were not dispossessed by communism.

He explained that it was a lot easier for Hungary to achieve these objectives in partnership with its neighbours than on its own, adding that he saw a good chance for Hungarians and Romanians to have shared goals in the future.

Commemorating the Timisoara events of 30 years ago, Viktor Orban said that the citizens of Timisoara and Romania had made it clear to the world that Central Europeans would take their freedom back at all costs, if necessary. 1989 showed that it was possible for Romanians and Hungarians to join together for the cause of freedom, he added. Concerning 1956, he also pointed out that, besides the Poles and Romania Hungarians, it was Romanians who supported Hungary s revolutionaries in the greatest numbers.

The prime minister also said that for 40 years, global policy-makers were in the firm belief that communism could be tamed or repaired, but then Romanians showed that it communism was impossible to „correct,” even by making compromises.

The peoples of Central Europe had always known, he continued, that they would never be gifted their freedom. „Had we decided to wait for the West, we would still be living under Soviet occupation, would be a member of the Warsaw Pact and would have a communist party congress to decide on our future. But we wanted to live free (…) and we have heroes who gave their blood for that cause,” Orban said.

30 years ago, in December 1989, in Timisoara, local residents tried to prevent the eviction of reformed pastor Laszlo Tokes by forming a human chain. The human chain became a demonstration, and the Romanian military eventually fired into the crowd. The protests have quickly spread throughout Romania sweeping away communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu s rule.