Government to access EU recovery money soon?
Hungary’s government is under pressure to let prices rise, the prime minister’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás said on today’s government info. He added that the government would continue to review the feasibility of prolonging the price caps as long as it could and as long as the country’s oil and gas supplies were secure.
In the current situation, the government has to prioritise the protection of families over market logic, Gulyás said.
He said it was western
European, US and Arab oil companies that were profiting off of the soaring prices in western Europe.
They are the real winners of the war because while the costs of oil extraction have not changed, prices have skyrocketed, Gulyas argued.
Meanwhile, Gulyás said the government had reviewed the European Commission’s letter activating the so-called conditionality mechanism linking European Union funding to the rule of law, and saw no obstacles to signing the agreement on the bloc’s Recovery and Resilient Facility (RRF) funding.
- Read also: Minister acknowledged: they received EC letter about activating the rule of law mechanism
Gulyás said there were certain areas on which the government would not compromise, which he said was an obligation dictated by the outcome of the recent parliamentary election. Those issues
include the aim for Hungary to stay out of the war in Ukraine,
its decision not to send weapons or soldiers to its north-eastern neighbour and the position that Hungary will not allow the Hungarian people to be made to pay the price of war, he said.
In connection with the EC’s letter, Gulyás said the issues it raised were all issues that “we have been negotiating with the Commission for months”. “There is no point where we don’t have a shared position, or where we wouldn’t have found an acceptable solution,” Gulyás said.
He also noted that Wednesday’s cabinet meeting had been the last one before the current government’s mandate expires following the inaugural meeting of the new parliament convened for May 2. Until the new government is sworn in, the current one will continue as a caretaker government, he noted.
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