Government spokeswoman Alexandra Szentkirályi said the government’s next National Consultation survey will include three questions on economic issues that substantially impact the Hungarian economy and the lives of Hungarian families and address “Brussels’s efforts to force its own will upon us”.
“Brussels wants Hungary to gradually phase out the utility price cuts, the freeze on interest rates and the windfall profit tax,” Szentkirályi said in a video on Facebook. One question will concern the European Commission’s plan on the utility price cap scheme thanks to which Hungary has the lowest household gas and electricity prices in the European Union and families as a result pay 181,000 forints (EUR 474) less for energy per month, she said. Hungarians will also be asked for their opinion about Brussels’s plan to scrap the freeze on interest rates, Szentkirályi said, noting that the scheme had so far protected 300,000 families and some 30,000 businesses from potential interest rate increases by banks in response to the war in Ukraine. A third question will concern Brussels’s call for phasing out the windfall profit tax which had been levied on multinational companies that had generated extra profit on the back of the coronavirus pandemic and the crisis related to the war in Ukraine, she said. The prime minister announced last Friday the launch of a new National Consultation survey “to strengthen the unity of voters and the country’s political leaders”. Viktor Orbán said the public survey was “a good way of asking some very serious questions, of which there are 10-11 now, and to give an opportunity to people to express their opinion.” The millions of responses that are regularly received for such surveys “establish large support behind the government, and the government can then conduct talks in Brussels with a self-assured position against the hurricane headwinds from Brussels”, he added.