Gergely Gulyás, Head of the Prime Minister's Office, said it has been a fundamental mistake by Brussels to extend EU sanctions to include energy because prices started to soar as a result.
Gulyás participated in a debate with Ferenc Gelencsér, the leader of opposition Momentum, at the annually-organized Tranzit festival in Tihany, at Lake Balaton, in western Hungary. Concerning the issue of the safety of energy supplies, Gulyás said the Hungarian state had purchased crude oil and natural gas at fixed prices. “The price to be paid for oil was about 21 dollars until April, and the price of gas was also fixed, around a tenth of today’s price,” Gulyás said. But after the EU extended the sanctions to the energy sector, energy prices began to go up, he said, calling the measure “a fundamental mistake”. Gulyás said that looking at prices in international markets on Friday “it would cost more than HUF 330,000 (EUR 807) to purchase electricity and gas at market prices”. But thanks to the government’s utility cap scheme, electricity and gas cost a combined HUF 25,000 to each household which means that each household receives HUF 300,000 support per month, he said.
Photo credit: Facebook/Gulyás Gergely