Hungary does not support EU sanctions on oil, gas
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It is unfair for the state to owe pensioners, Gergely Gulyás, the prime minister’s chief of staff, said on Sunday in connection with the government’s recently announced pension hike. He announced earlier this week that pensions will increase by a further 3.9 percent from July in light of higher than expected inflation, bringing the overall pension hike to 8.9 percent.
Speaking to public broadcaster Kossuth Rádió, Gulyás said the government knows that inflation will be higher than what had been projected prior to the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. The 3.9 percent pension increase will make it easier to address the difficulties posed by inflation, he said, adding that the increased pension will be paid retroactively from the start of the year in one go. Gulyás said Hungarians must not be made to pay the price of war. This can be prevented
“if we can continue to buy our energy at the cheapest possible price”,
he added.
The European Union should therefore withdraw its earlier decisions and should not approve sanctions that would make it impossible for member states to import Russian oil and gas, Gulyás said. Otherwise Hungary would have to buy this energy at much higher prices, which would make it impossible to uphold household utility price caps and the economy could not function, either, he added.
The government aims to preserve the conditions needed for the utility price caps to remain in place, Gulyas said, noting that this required Hungary to have access to oil and gas and for energy prices to return to normal levels as soon as possible.
Maybe there’s a reason we get things cheap from Russia, or with great financing deals? No such thing as a free lunch !
The headline is about sanctions (Energy Ministers in Europe are meeting today) and then the article waffles on about pensions which is a totally different subject before discussing sanctions. It does not matter what Gergely Beef Stew says, the outcome of the meeting today will show whether Hungary uses its veto or not. That is what is important.