In a video posted on the government's Facebook page, the prime minister said mark-ups were 42 percent on chicken wings, 55 percent on pork chops, 68 percent on milk, 129 percent on soured cream, and 38 percent on eggs, among others.

He added: "We couldn't continue simply looking on as people were robbed; those who raised prices had to be told: enough, no more!"

Orban: Govt couldn't stand by while supermarkets 'cashed in' on consumers

Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the government couldn't stand by while supermarket chains "cashed in" on consumers and had to intervene to mitigate food price increases in a weekly interview on public radio.

Addressing a 10pc government-mandated cap on profit margins on hundreds of basic food products at big supermarket chains in force from Monday, Orban said the government had been forced to intervene, pointing to markups of 45pc, 50pc or even 129pc.

"That has nothing to do with market processes," he added.

After the transition to a market economy, Orban said Hungary's supermarket chains had ended up under foreign ownership, adding that"they are only interested in profits".

Orban noted that the government had negotiated with supermarket chains before rolling out the markup cap, but those talks had not yielded results.

He said the measure had brought down the prices of around 760 food products. If that measure should not be enough to bring inflation down, "we have other instruments in store" to influence market trends, he added. 

"Not interfering with market trends each day reflects that Hungary has a business and market-friendly government, that seeks to ensure that the economy operates along its own logic ... should the market derail for some reason, we need to put it back on track," Orban said. He also said he trusted that foreign chains in Hungary "will sooner or later realise that they cannot win against the government, they can only lose the battle."

"Nobody questions an acceptable margin ... there should be some margin and some profit on their side, but let 10 percent be enough," the prime minister said.

Meanwhile, Orban said those arguing for a VAT reduction were "either ignorant, young, or inexperienced". 

The government had reduced the VAT on a number of food products to 5 percent, he said, adding, however, that "one third of the reduction resulted in lower prices, two thirds were absorbed by distributors, but ... after a few months the prices were as high again". 

"Young people in politics may not know this, but the old foxes -- leftists, mostly -- will know full well but they have always sided with the multinationals," Orban said. "A VAT cut always means transferring money to multinational companies," he said.

Concerning recent changes to the law on assembly, the prime minister said "in a normal case" the current assembly regulations and child protection could go together. 

"But not when sexuality -- whether it is between partners of different or the same sex -- is taken to the street or all kinds of gender activists would barge into schools and tell children, rather than parents telling them, what they should know about that extremely complicated part of life," he said.

"Normal people such as we are, are now being constantly provoked because people with a non-traditional sexual behaviour , which they have the right to ... will take that behaviour to the open disregarding the millions of children in the country," Orban said.

"We want them to see that freedom and child protection could go hand in hand; there is a place for freedom and raising children has its own ways," the prime minister said, adding that "the ongoing debate in parliament is about whether or not the child comes first."

The government believes that the right to a healthy upbringing of children is a fundamental right, and this must be taken into consideration when exercising all fundamental rights, Orban said.

The government, he said, was now working on creating a legal status quo that will enable the authorities to determine whether or not "events like Pride can be organised out on the streets" based on the public assembly law, "or if the rights of our children come first and so there’s no place for this out in the open". 

"The authorities are in a tight fit, because it is not clear what has precedence: freedom or licentiousness ... Pride marchers or children," he said. According to the government, "our children come first and everybody must adapt to that, and a clear legal situation must be created," Orban said.

Concerning the annual Pride events, Orban said he had "always been concerned, as a father, as a Hungarian citizen ... that such things could happen; in addition, I was prime minister and still it happened." He added it was "an experiment of sexually re-conditioning society" and the government had been under "huge international pressure, which we could call a gender network, from Washington and Brussels at the same time".

Hungary, he said, had not been in a position to "go against a hurricane", adding, however, that the world had changed and "new winds are blowing in Washington". He said the government would come into conflict with Brussels but would "have to endure this single-front battle".

"We have to try and win this battle for the sake of our children," Orban said, adding that "there’s a greater chance for this than ever before". He said the "changes in the US" had given the government the necessary room for manoeuvre "to try to enforce the simple human law that the child comes first, and then comes every other freedom…"

Orban said his government had been working since 2010 to create a "family-friendly economy", explaining that this was the reason behind the family tax breaks, personal income tax exemptions for mothers and the government’s "manhunt" against drug dealers.

Commenting on Brussels’s criticism of the amendment to the public assembly law, Orban said: "This is none of Brussels’s business." He said that though Brussels had "got used to taking over national competencies from member states in recent years, and we’re fighting against this". He said it was "obvious that the issue of the regulation of family life is clearly and exclusively a national competency", adding that "Brussels has no business here."

As regards the opposition Momentum lawmakers’ disruption of Tuesday’s vote in parliament with the use of smoke flares, Orban said such "violent actions" will be judged by voters in next year’s general election.

Concerning his decision to veto another joint EU statement on Ukraine, the prime minister said: "Moments when Hungary promotes a position different from that of the other 26 member states should not be terrifying; there will come a moment when Hungary's position gains a majority."

Earlier on Hungary was the only country "to say no to migration, to build a fence [along the border] and face a dispute," Orban said. "Eight or nine prime ministers, earlier protesting about the current refugee rules, repeated literally what Hungary said and did ten years ago, in a discussion on Thursday," Orban said.

"We should not be terrified when we are left alone because we could be proven right in the end," he said, adding that "the same story is taking place now, in connection with the war."

"Everybody sees that this war has been lost, and it was a bad decision to jump in," he said, adding that "each Hungarian household has lost 2.5 million forints on the war, rich countries even more."
 

"We are still far from having a majority, since yesterday most members decided to go on with the war, send even more money and more weapons to Ukraine, but that joint decision was not as firm and rock-solid as before," he said.

"The moment will come, just like in the case of migration, when Hungary's is the shared position of Europe," he said.

"Apart from us, everyone is talking about the desirability of Ukraine’s accession, but the numbers are starting to influence how they think," Orban said.

Ukraine’s EU accession would be a "huge financial burden on the EU, and the bloc can’t afford it", he said. "To this they say that we should take out even more loans to admit the Ukrainians," he added. "It wouldn’t be right for Hungary to get into joint debt with anyone else," Orban said, adding that the repayment of earlier loans was already "causing difficulty".

Orban said that when calculating the costs of Ukraine's EU accession and maintaining the Ukrainian army, it turned out that the repayment of the loan taken out during the pandemic was coming due in 2027-28.

The calculations showed that this would take up 20 percent of the EU's budget, he said.

With this big of a burden, Orban argued, it was "not right" for the EU to think about taking out more loans. "Sooner or later it'll be time to sober up, at least financially, and everyone will admit that Ukraine's admission to the European Union at this point in time would be tantamount to an economic collapse," he added.
 

Orban said every country would debate whether Ukraine should join the EU.

In Hungary, he said, the ruling parties believe Ukraine’s accession at this point in time would "ruin Hungary and the European economy as a whole". But the opposition, he added, held "pro-Ukraine positions".

He said this was "no surprise" because it reflected the lines of division in Brussels. While ruling Fidesz’s grouping, the Patriots, was saying "not so fast", the Socialists with Hungary’s opposition Democratic Coalition and the European People’s Party, which includes opposition Tisza, were "the most radical pro-Ukraine forces", Orban said.

He said Hungarian parties belonging to the EPP and the Socialists "have no choice but to represent the position that their party alliances represent in Brussels".

Meanwhile, Orban said Hungary "has to face the debate in which there are the patriotic forces on one side, and the Tisza Party, the Democratic Coalition, the European People's Party, and the Socialists, that support a fast-tracked European Union membership for Ukraine." Once that debate is over, the Hungarian government will have "a strong footing" in Brussels, he added.

No other country can avoid that debate, Orban said, adding that "in each member state people will demand that their voice should be heard ... right now people are not asked about such questions outside Hungary, but it is no surprise: in the whole of Europe people were not consulted about migration or gender ideology."

Orban said Hungarians will get the chance to vote in a referendum on Ukraine’s EU accession from April, and the country will have settled on a common national position by the middle of the year. He urged the public to "consider all sorts of risks".

He pointed to a financial, and an agricultural risk, saying that European farmers could go bankrupt, while he said there was a risk for the labour market with a possible "influx of tens of millions of people to the EU".

There was also a security risk, he said, as "Ukraine is not a country famous for public security, from where all kinds of hazards could be imported" and there were food safety risks as well "because their production culture is different from ours".

Orban also noted risks concerning pensions. Ukraine's EU accession could only result in a "negative balance" for the bloc, he said, adding that "we have enough problems already, we should not take that on."

Concerning the war in Ukraine, Orban said that "Brussels is mistaken, when they think there will be a huge negotiating table for all affected parties to sit around". 

"The Americans will make a deal with everybody separately ... we Europeans will suddenly find that there is a US-Ukrainian, a US-Russian, and a Russian-Ukrainian agreement without us," he added.

Source: 
MTI - The Hungarian News Agency, founded in 1881.

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