Csaba Molnár said the prime minister had made it clear in his presser that “the country cannot expect the government to make a turnaround”, adding that “policies of the past 12 years, which have destroyed the country … will stay”. 

“As long as Orbán stays, the crisis will stay and the longer he stays the bigger the problem will grow,” he insisted.

Conservative Jobbik insisted that “it was the Orbán government that made 2022 the most difficult year for Hungary since the political regime change” of 1989. 

The prime minister’s presser “has projected what we can expect in 2023: lies, even more lies, and no responsible government or decisions”, the party said in a statement. 

They insisted the government had failed to manage the crisis and its “ill-advised” economic policy had driven the country to the brink of bankruptcy, while Orbán “pointed the finger at the war, the EP and Brussels” in his press briefing.

 Jobbik said the government had “bled people and businesses dry” by changing the small business tax, while people are “being destroyed through record-high VAT” and they “have to face the situation of wages and pensions being despicably low even in a regional comparison”.

The Momentum party said ruling Fidesz “even lied in the face of its own voters” and the government’s work had been “chaotic” in 2022. In his press briefing the prime minister had “blamed others and shunned responsibility for Hungary’s worst times in recent decades”. 

They said Orbán’s referring to “exceptional achievements” and not mentioning an economic and cost-of-living crisis hitting the country was “both shocking and desperate”. 

Momentum pointed to the “price cap inflation” of food prices, soaring energy costs and the weakness of the Hungarian currency, and insisted that “many families will face a dilemma at the end of the month whether to heat their home or buy food”. 

Orbán, Momentum said, could “only blame the sanctions he himself voted for, the minister he appointed, an economic system he introduced and the governor of the central bank chosen by his own party”.

Green LMP said that the prime minister “put on an extraordinary no-responsibility show which was about how to shift the responsibility of governing onto various players”. 

“We learnt that the central bank’s governor is to blame for the high inflation and the unprecedented devaluation of the forint, as we also learnt that the EU is to blame for the soaring energy prices,” the party’s deputy group leader told a press conference. 

The prime minister, when asked about nuclear energy, an issue LMP is keen on, appeared to be “rather tense”, Máté Kanász-Nagy said, insisting that the reason was that the Paks upgrade project had not even started yet. 

Orbán “was pointing a finger at others again, this time the opposition,” he said.


MTI Photo: Szilárd Koszticsák