The poll highlights that
The majority of Hungarians do not support the energy policy of Ferenc Gyurcsány and Péter Márki-Zay
What the energy policy of Ferenc Gyurcsány and Péter Márki-Zay has in common is that they both reject the administered prices resulting in the reduction of overhead costs and support market pricing that would increase the vulnerability of Hungarian people, leading to a huge increase in overhead bills. Therefore, Századvég examined whether Hungarians support the administered energy prices providing for overhead cost reduction or the politicians in favour of market prices, including the acceptance of rising energy prices in the European Union.
the vast majority of respondents, 91 percent, are somewhat concerned about the rise in energy prices in the European Union,
while 7 percent are not concerned.
The results of the survey suggest that the topic has considerable political relevance, and it can also be seen that
the vast majority of the Hungarian population, more than three-quarters (77 percent) support a candidate or policy in an election that advocates state regulation and control of energy prices, in addition to overhead cost reduction.
In contrast, the proportion of those who would support a candidate who is in favour of market energy prices, opposes administered pricing, and would abolish overhead cost reduction, is 18 percent.
Background
Between 2002 and 2010, left-wing governments raised public utility service charges fifteen times, doubling the price of electricity, and tripling the price of natural gas in households. During the Gyurcsány administration, compared to wages, Hungarians paid the most for gas and electricity throughout the European Union. The leading politician of the left, Ferenc Gyurcsány, continues to reject the policy of overhead cost reduction and called it “stupid” in 2014 and, opposing the interests of the population, supplemented his profit-oriented approach to the interests of service providers with the following: “They will reduce overhead costs three more times and then they will pay to make us willing to heat. You can applaud for plunging all the profit, but then we will end up starving because we need profit in a well-functioning economy.”
Péter Márki-Zay called the civilian government’s overhead cost reduction nonsense, and advocated market-based energy prices – thus the policy of Ferenc Gyurcsány – when he stated: “Real overhead cost reduction could be achieved in Hungary, if it was not done by fooling the population, in an administrative way, imposing the burden of the charges, which were relieved from the population to ease the burden, on industrial consumers, on everybody in the form of taxes, making whole industries loss-making.”
Péter Márki-Zay rejects the policy of overhead cost reduction and said the following about water, electricity, and gas consumption in households: “How stupid it was to reduce overhead costs this way back then. Overhead cost can be reduced, of course, it can: less water should be used, less electricity should be used, less gas should be used…”
Methodology: CATI method (via telephone), n=1000, among the politically active Hungarian adult population (who promise to vote for sure or probably vote), data collection: October 2021, margin of error: +/- 3.4 percentage points