Does Member of the European Parliament Klara Dobrev think that Hungarians are manual laborers, cheap, stupid, vulnerable and unnecessary people? No, that's not true: One of her sentences from 2020 was twisted.
The claim originally appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok on December 9, 2023, under the title (translated from Hungarian to English by Lead Stories staff):
Dobrev's opinion on Hungarian people: Manual laborers are cheap, stupid, vulnerable, unnecessary people.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Dec 11 17:40:33 2023 UTC)
Klara Dobrev is the shadow prime minister of Demokratikus Koalíció, the strongest opposition party in the Hungarian Parliament. She is the wife of Ferenc Gyurcsany, former prime minister of Hungary and the head of Demokratikus Koalíció.
The quote the video uses is taken from an interview with Dobrev on ATV on October 23, 2020. The quote is twisted and taken out of context. These are the original sentences (as translated):
Fidesz's entire policy is based on trying to serve multinational companies with cheap vulnerable labor. They live under the spell that this will be what will bring growth to this country. And maybe they make the numbers look better, but there are people behind the numbers. A country that is basically built on the manual labor of cheap, vulnerable, uneducated workers is not competitive. I told you, that smart, healthy and balanced people are needed.
