Opposition would set up ‘green ministry’

The opposition LMP party on Wednesday pledged to set up a “green ministry” and to stop environmental destruction should the party come to power at the general election in the spring.

Reviewing the events of 2021, party co-leader Erzsébet Schmuck slammed the government for “a long list of measures endangering this generation’s lives and livelihood” as well as the liveable environment in the future. Environmental destruction also causes serious economic damage and increases poverty, she told an online press briefing.

Schmuck insisted that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “feels the pressure over the cabinet’s policies that speed up climate change …

and is attempting to greenwash those measures.”

Hungary continued to veto European Union climate goals in 2021, and the government failed to take steps to curb emissions, adapt to climate change or protect green areas, she said. “While the prime minister goes on about taxing large polluters in the EU, he signs strategic cooperation agreements with large corporations at home,” she said.

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After car manufacturing, the

government is subsidising battery manufacturing, another “high polluting industry”,

she said. Meanwhile, Orbán “insists on expensive and dangerous” nuclear energy, she said.

Meanwhile MTI reported that the share of renewables in Hungary’s gross final energy consumption rose by 1.3 of a percentage point to 13.9 percent last year, an annual report released by the Hungarian Energy and Public Utility Regulatory Authority (MEKH) shows.