State Secretary Engages in Intense Debate with Opposition MP

State Secretary Csaba Dömötör discussed the war in Ukraine, energy supplies, and EU sanctions with opposition Momentum MP Miklós Hajnal.

“The most important goals of the government in the coming period are to secure energy supplies, protect families, and jobs,” Csaba Dömötör, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office said at the Transit Public Life Season Opening and Thought Expo political conference in Tihany, by Lake Balaton on Friday.

The politician was debating with Miklós Hajnal, a member of parliament for the opposition Momentum party, who said that the main problem facing Hungarians at the moment is uncertainty. He said that people do not know how the government will change the rules on utility costs, even though prior to the election they had promised to maintain the utility cost reduction.

In Dömötör’s view, most of the domestic economic difficulties springing from the war in Ukraine are related to misguided sanctions. He recalled that the opposition was against the utility cost reduction from the beginning.

According to Hajnal, the opposition also wants peace, and no one in Europe is in favor of war. He said that the main guarantee for peace in Hungary is that Russia is not a neighboring country.

The State Secretary pointed out that the government had also condemned Russian aggression, yet did not support sanctions that would hurt Europe more than they hurt the aggressor.

According to the Momentum MP, it is understandable that the government opposes the gas embargo in the interests of energy security, but it could have reduced the country’s dependence on Russian gas in the past twelve years in power, for example, by building wind farms. Dömötör recalled that the dependence on gas was already established in the 1970s and 1980s, and the government did a lot to counteract it, for example, by concluding long-term contracts and developing new routes.

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