Government committed to maintain cheap utility prices

The government is insistent on protecting its scheme to ensure households have access to cheap energy, notwithstanding “attacks from Brussels and the left wing”, the government commissioner for maintaining the scheme said on Thursday.

Szilárd Németh told a press conference that left-wingers and people in Brussels, referring to the EU country report on Hungary, were issuing statements that gave the impression that the EU expected the Hungarian government to abandon the scheme by year-end and provide energy to Hungarian households under “market conditions”.

He insisted that next year’s budget was robust enough that the government would not have to “cancel” subsidies on utility bills. “We’re unwilling to abandon the [scheme]….” Németh said, adding that Eurostat data indicated that nominally Hungarian households have access to the cheapest electricity and gas among EU member states, while in purchasing power parity terms Hungary’s household energy costs put the country in third place.

We will protect the utility price reduction scheme from Brussels, the government commissioner highlighted in his Facebook post:

Price of public utilities “shows signs of chaos”?

Implementation of the government’s scheme to cap the price of public utilities “shows signs of chaos”, the opposition Jobbik-Conservatives said on Friday.

György László Lukács, the party’s deputy leader, said “many consumers have recently received bills suggesting that the benefit has disappeared”. He insisted that families that did not consume more gas than average and paid earlier up to 30,000 forints a month, were now facing bills between 80,000-120,000 forints (EUR 210-320). Lukács demanded that service provider MVM should explain the anomalies and that the government launch an investigation to “prevent behaviours resulting in such high bills”.