Opposition DK pledges steeper pension hikes

The opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) has pledged to reinstate the Swiss indexation for calculating pensions, which they said would ensure steeper increases, and to give a 150,000 forint (EUR 427) bonus to pensioners to compensate inflation, DK’s deputy group leader said on Monday.

Hungary’s 5.1 percent inflation rate is the highest in Europe, Gergely Arató told an online press conference. The EU average is 2.3 percent, he said.

Experts have attributed Hungary’s record inflation to bad government decisions and a mistaken policy of the central bank, Arató said.

Changes to the pension system will cause pensions to lose their value further, pushing more and more people into destitution, he warned. Already hundredfold differences between large and small pensions are set to grow even wider, he said.

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