And then when the US finally started pulling its weight on the climate crisis, it did so in a way that amounted to indirect siphoning from Europe’s economy instead of just paying the true costs of its own polluting. Never mind that Europeans have, for decades, emitted far less per capita than Americans, who, despite having substantially higher median disposable incomes than, say, the French, pay roughly half as much for petrol – and only $0.184 a gallon of that in tax, an amount that hasn’t budged since 1993. (Somehow they manage to remain insufferable whiners about how much it costs to fill the tanks of the increasingly enormous cars they choose to drive.)
There’s that overarching argument – the US is stealing from the EU economy by doing something about climate change – but there’s also that telling detail. That gas tax mentioned in the Federal one. And it’s only the Federal one. Near all states also have a state gasoline tax. There are also more local taxes in some areas.
The mimbling whinge is complaining as if an American said there’s no EU petrol tax therefore there’s no tax on petrol in the EU. Which would be, we agree, grossly stupid, yes?
Of course, the argument gets very much worse. Apparently Hungary is not meeting the standards the writer expects in falling into the EU line. Therefore:
The EU finally has a window to act against the concrete threat Orbán poses to the rule of law, democracy and the union’s own ability to function. Now it must use it. Article 7 of the treaty on European union allows for a member state’s membership rights to be suspended if it “seriously and persistently breaches the principles on which the EU is founded”, defined as “respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for fundamental rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities”.
The voters of Hungary are to be entirely disenfranchised. We must, at the same time, have more democracy!
There is a collection of urgent actions the EU could move forward with to make itself more democratic, nimble and effective. These include setting a common floor for corporate tax rates and collecting up to that amount as EU “own resources” to replace national contributions; far more ambitious green infrastructure and climate spending with a pan-European vision, rather than a collection of national ones; perhaps even setting up a single, directly elected European “president” rather than the competing dual presidencies of the commission and the council.
Yes, well done, entirely disempower the demos and that makes us more democratic, right?
Alexander Hurst is a France-based writer and an adjunct lecturer at Sciences Po, the Paris Institute of Political Studies
Jeez. Can’t even get a real job at a sodding *French* university….
Rule of thumb: If a journalist is “based” somewhere, their views can safely be ignored.
Journalist?! Isn’t this the Grauniad?
He has an interesting blueprint for the way he wants the EU to progress. It’s pretty close to my line of reasoning that led me to vote for Brexit.
Petrol in California costs pretty much the same as in the UK.
It is slowly dawning on me, and it has taken far too long, that the climate crisis bollocks being debunked and put to bed is a matter of great urgency. The whole of Western civilisation is committing economic suicide over a problem that is entirely imaginary.
I clicked the link.
tw@t looks like his main job is cycling round England selling strings of onions from his pushbike.
Why is it the journos who most look like they have AIDS are always incandescent with rage at Eastern Europeans for being normal conservatives?
From Ukraine to the climate crisis, the union is beset by shocks. It can no longer afford to let Hungary give it the runaround
Beset with shocks, eh? Good thing we Left.
Alexander Hurst is a France-based writer and an adjunct lecturer at Sciences Po, the Paris Institute of Political Studies
If I was Alexander Hurst I’d worry less about Hungarians, and worry more about the next time the Diversity decides to burn down Paris.
Re: siphoning the EU’s economy, isn’t that the EU’s job? The EU (and Britain, tho NB option A wasn’t needed here) had a few major non-mutually-exclusive options:
A) Buy cheap energy from Russia
B) Extract cheap energy from under our own feet
C) Build less cheap, but reliable and tested, new atomic plant
D) Do none of the above and import some of the most expensive energy on the planet from places such as the United States
They chose option D, which means economic ruin. This cannot now be escaped, thanks to Rishi and Boris and Theresa and Ursula and Nicolas and Angela and all the rest of the Lamppost Extended Universe. We are going to pass through the fire, and our would-be rulers in poverty are not.
This EU thing was just a fantasy, it’s melting down into a puddle of toxic gay fluids while the rest of the world (China alone is building 52 GW of new coal fired electrical plant in 2023) powers ahead to a more prosperous future that does not involve Diversity, Equality, Greta Thumbface, drag queens, Just Stop Oil, “part n parcel”, or the EU.
For example:
Viktor Orbán has done all of the same and now threatens to scuttle the formal start of Ukraine’s eventual accession to the EU, which is meant to happen at a summit of the 27 leaders next week
The EU is already broke. Ukraine is even more broken. They’re a match made in Hell. Even talking about Ukraine in the EU at this point – in the middle of the biggest war on the European continent since 1945 – is madness, but these are crazy times.
I worked in Budapest for a while shortly after the Wall came down and have fond memories of the country. Orban and Fidesz had not long started.
For an alternative view on Orban’s Hungary, see this
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/november-2023/orban-guardian-of-liberal-freedoms/
It certainly sounds as though you were right to get out of the EU.
Now all you need to do is to fully complete your Brexit.
An adjunct lecturer at Sciences Po (formerly École Libre des Sciences Politiques) is what would be styled professor by incumbents on the other side of the Atlantic and in Ely or as four-square antisemites by everyone else.
I love how Orban is regarded as a “threat to democracy” because, dammit, these idiots will keep voting for him.
Bogan
In less than 12 months we will be back in the eu in all but name.
We will also agree to pay a hefty rejoining fee for the privilege and allow the UK to be ruthlessly bummed into oblivion as a sovereign nation by every single unelected and unaccountable European institution.
Sir Keir will see the recent betrayal of the Irish people by its own government less as a warning and more as a blueprint.
John
If Albanese could join the EU, he’d be in like a shot.
Brogan –
Australia has already joined Eurovision – can EU membership be far behind?
@bravefart “tw@t looks like his main job is cycling round England selling strings of onions from his pushbike.”
doubt he’d have the muscle power for tha,t he looks like a beta male who’d lose an arm wrestling contest with a 13 year old girl and then go crying home to his trans “girlfriend”
Regarding the ‘increasingly enormous’ comment, it’s simply bullshit. Aeverage weight of US automobiles is about-the-same as it was in 1975
https://streets.mn/2019/05/09/chart-of-the-day-fuel-economy-weight-and-horsepower-1975-2018/
and the slight increases in average weight over the last couple of years are driven by the far-greater weight of battery-electric vehicles, as much as 30% greater than comparably-sized ICE vehicles. It’s the simplest thing to investigate, but heaven forbid any actual facts stand in the way of his ignorant prejudices.
llater,
llamas
A thought: “democracy & the rule of law”
You can’t have both. They’re opposites. In a democracy, legislation is used to change the rule of law. So democracy is antagonistic & contrary to the rule of law. Having legislated, there’s now a new rule of law until the next time.. The point about democracy is it’s superior to the rule of law. The two can’t coexist. If the rule of law triumphs, it can’t be a democracy.
Came to say what I see llamas has already said. ‘Got me a car it’s as big as a whale’ isn’t a lyric anyone in the US would write these days.
@Llamas
Curiously, I’ve noticed just the same thing. There’s a couple of US drama series I’ve been watching recently, made in the last few years. If you look at any street scene, it doesn’t look any different to Europe. Apart from the width of the streets. The models of the vehicles may be slightly different but the mix is is much the same. There aren’t noticeably more large cars.
I suppose there’s two things create the myth.
One’s historic. The US did at one time have completely different model ranges to Europe. And yes they did used to go in for bigger body sizes. That hasn’t been true for years.
The other is people’s views are influenced by what they see in films & TV. And that tends to be biased towards rural settings. So yes, you do see a lot more of those giant pick-ups out in Texas or somewhere. Where there’s a need for them. You don’t see so many in Europe simply because it’d be hard to bring them into much narrower European city streets.
@ Interested, BiS – just another example of many things about the US that “Europeans know, that just ain’t so.” Most cars in both places are boring grocery-getters, many being virtually-identical products of Far Eastern brands. Any minor overall tendency to slightly-larger passenger cars is almost-entirely due to the larger average size of US families.
Interesting to also note, from the same graph, that over the same time period, US fuel economy has improved by about 90% – and this despite the lower octane rating of US pump gas, mandated adulteration with lower-energy additives like ethanol, and environmental requirements more-stringent than required for the European market.
llater,
llamas
Guardian eco-tosser calls Americans “insufferable whiners”.
“Alexander Hurst is a France-based writer and an adjunct lecturer at Sciences Po, the Paris Institute of Political Studies”
Ah yes, modern adjuncts – the ‘I spent 8+ years to get a doctorate and am still basically unemployable’ crowd.
There was a time when adjuncts were people who had spent careers in industry who came back around academia to impart some of the lessons learned ‘in the real world’ to students. Now they’re a country does with its excess PhD’s.
To add in to the comments about American car sizes (at least you’re not making fun of our ever-increasing waist sizes;) – the best selling truck for the last 20 years is the Ford F150.
Its certainly a large truck by European standards but its maintained its sized and weight fairly well over the decades – not appreciably larger today than it was in the past and its even *more fuel efficient* now than before.
People, like me, that drive F-250’s and larger equivalents are actually pretty rare and they’re usually in rural areas where the trucks double as work vehicles.
@Llamas
One thing one notices from US street scenes is the almost complete absence of the small, car sized, van. Which’ll possibly comprise 5-10% of the vehicles you’ll see on any European day time city street. They even available in the US? Sort of people I know Stateside are similar to I know here. Self employed, manual/service. That’s a big slice of the population. Europe you might have a small van for work & a car for leisure. A lot of the guys Stateside seem to opt for 4-door pickup type vehicles ( often with a bed top) get built on a commercial chassis. OK, so a bigger vehicle. But they use them for both. Influence of difference tax regimes? Or crime patterns? I wouldn’t want to be parking something with expensive tools aboard on European city streets, nightime. Not if I wanted to keep them. More US off-street parking?
So the net result’s you’re going to see larger vehicles but less of them.
Regarding commercial vans in the US – one sees them more and more. In the 80s through the 00s, there would be any number of body-on-frame cabover vans tootling around, but then they rather fell out of favour. But now there is a new generation of lighter, standing-height vans, like the Ford Transit and the various Dodge products. Sprinter vans are also surprisingly-common, and of course the custom box vans used by UPS and FedEx are everywhere. I heard where Amazon contracted some fantastic number of BEV delivery vans from Rivian, so of course those are still not in service and may never be. Many contractors of the ‘white van man’ type prefer the pickup-truck-and-trailer combination, where the trailer can be far-larger than any van could be, and can be uncoupled and parked. Around here, we see a lot of day-cab cabover vans from brands like Hino hauling white goods and furniture. It’s an interesting market.
llater,
llamas
The EU finally has a window to act against the concrete threat Orbán poses to the rule of law, democracy and the union’s own ability to function.
I think he’s won four elections in a row in Hungary – seems democratic to me!!
How many times has any EU Commission president been elected on the same basis as a national leader?
Now it must use it. Article 7 of the treaty on European union allows for a member state’s membership rights to be suspended if it “seriously and persistently breaches the principles on which the EU is founded”,
Then why the hell hasn’t France been hauled over the coals for the past 4 decades?
defined as “respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for fundamental rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities”.
I’d argue that there has been:
– No respect for human dignity
– Minimal freedom to demur from the Federast vision
– Considerable inequality
– Selective adherence to the rule of law
– Minimal regard for fundamental rights when they contradict the wider EU Federalist goals
– Scant regard for the rights of anyone opposed to the Federast vision
Since about 1983 and maybe even from inception on the EU’s part
This has been applicable to Hungary for years now, even if actually initiating and following through on a suspension has been politically unfeasible. That has to change. European voters see “muddling through” happening everywhere.
I don’t see any muddling through in the rush to facilitate:
– The complete impoverishment of the European people through Net Zero
– The complete replacement of the population by immigration from other parts of the world
– The total surrender to militant child molesters (The Big Trans Lobby)
If this has been accomplished by ‘muddling through’ let’s hope for all our sakes they don’t get their act together.
They see impunity for the powerful, and for nobody else.
Fair comment – I’d like to see George Soros and Klaus Schwab under arrest for their activities even prior to COVID
They see authoritarian rulers flouting the basic principles of the political union they belong to – even as they welcome its money with open arms – without ever facing consequences. Politics is messy, and diplomacy, “the art of the possible”, even more so. But the EU is more than just a collection of states, and if its laws are never enforced, then they will cease to have much meaning.
Has this guy actually lived in the EU for the past 4 decades? Has he got any exposure even to the French press in that time?
But to move forward on any of that, the EU itself has to be watertight when it comes to corruption, democracy, the rule of law and the rest of the values it’s built on.
The EU is built on
– Corruption
– Naked abuse of power
– Arbitrary Fiat
– Complete unaccountability
is cretin’s vision of the EU lives beyond some kind of Wet Dream but he must have been living in a cave for four decades or more.
Step one is suspending Hungary’s vote until it once again meets those criteria. Time to stop muddling and dawdling and thumb-twiddling and just do it.
No more Tokaji or Paprika for him. What a ghastly piece of work. Is he as evil as Murphy? Certainly a good start.
Alexander Hurst is a France-based writer and an adjunct lecturer at Sciences Po, the Paris Institute of Political Studies
Why is it that males who write for the Guardian invariably look like they have a testosterone level in the single digits? I mean, are they required to lose a pillow fight with some bimbo in HR before being allow to write?
Dennis,
I believe they have to win one bout out of three in an arm wrestling contest with Dylan Mulvaney.
It’s like these people have never seen an Eldorado Brougham:
“I want an old fashioned car, a cerise Cadillac
Long enough to put a bowling alley in the back”
Eartha Kitt, how we miss you!
If you want to have a thoroughly enjoyable read, the writer’s brief career as a market trader is to be recommended. How he turned $15000 of borrowed money into a $51000 debt via $1.2 million of profit.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/04/how-i-lost-1m-during-the-pandemic
Aspiring successful capitalist he isn’t. Lady Luck must’ve been pissing herself laughing.
@BiS – can it be that I read that article right? He borrowed $15K, traded it up to $1.6M, pi**ed it all the way down to a $51K loss – and he never even repaid the initial $15K loan?
So he borrowed someone else’s money, traded it up to 100x the original amount, lost the lot and more besides – and then he stiffed the lender? And he’s crying the blues about what a horrible person the experience turned him into?
What an utter scumbag.
llater,
llamas
I’m surprised to see so much support for Orban. If a left wing Govt had manipulated the press and judiciary in the way he has there’d be plenty of complaints.
I would have thought a little more manipulating of the judiciary by the government around your parts would have been welcome. Like I said above, the judiciary are opponents of democracy. Certainly of the UK electorate. Bitter opponents
@Boganboy – “Now all you need to do is to fully complete your Brexit.”
Brexit is fuly completed. The UK is no longer a member of the EU. That is the very definition of Brexit. Anyone who thinks that there are further changes required must not have read the ballot paper when they were voting as there were no further conditions attached. Or, famously, Brexit means Brexit.
@bloke in spain – ” “democracy & the rule of law” You can’t have both.”
You can. The rule of law does not mean that the law is fixed and unchangeable. It means that the law is known and the punishments for breaking laws are specified in advance. This is usually contrasted to the rule of man, whereby an autocratic ruler simply decides on a whim whether someone is guilty, or can seize someone’s property under the guise of taxation even though other people in the same situation do not pay that tax. You could have the rule of law under a dictator, as long as the dictator specified the laws which were then fairly and even-handedly enforced. Democracy is merely an alternative way to specify the laws. This is in contrast to mob rule, whereby the people can declare someone as guilty on a whim or seize property for no reason other than they have the power to do so.
Brexit is fuly completed.
Piffle.
We are deliberately, and with malice aforethought, tidally locked into the EU’s sad, gay orbit by sniggering, chinless, OBE’ed little quimlets of men whose grand vision for Britain amounts to the Windsor Knot and self-harming tax harmonisation with Brussels.
But you knew that already.
The tragedy of Darth Britius is that, with wiser leadership, we would be experiencing a Golden Age of prosperity and contentment.
We have vast, untapped cheap energy wealth. Genius boffins gagging to roll out modular nukes. Young people who are not all completely useless. All manner of useful and productive infrastructure improvements and de-Blairification investments we could be making for the short and long term benefit of our country.
Instead of, y’know, being a shitty immigrant hotel cheap labour homo-authoritarian sweatshop economy run by cunts.
@Charles
Sorry, but the demos can be an autocratic ruler just as much as any dictator. Mob rule? If he mob’s in the majority, that’s democracy isn’t it?
“Democracy is merely an alternative way to specify the laws. This is in contrast to mob rule, whereby the people can declare someone as guilty on a whim or seize property for no reason other than they have the power to do so.”
What? Like now? That’s the world we live in.
This is obvious shite, but there’s a good case to be made that the entire climate bullshit is being tried out on Germany. Canary in mine style.
The results are clear in the fact that you are hearing jack shit about what is going on here any more.
– I’m surprised to see so much support for Orban.
I’m not; it’s just a case of fellow travellers who haven’t yet fallen out over something. Andrew Tate was cool for a while until it turned out his seeming “based” was due to him being a Muslim with all the fun that entails.
Orban seems pretty cool generally but he didn’t listen to his buddy Trump’s warning on being reliant on Russian energy (85%) so is forced to take a ridiculous and dangerous position on the Ukraine situation. The puff piece that BraveFart linked to strongly hints at corruption, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Orban was taking a backhander to keep taking the gas. So Hungary is now Russia’s (warm) bitch.
If Hungary is 85% dependent on Russian gas, why would Orban need bribing? Bribed to not take the gas, maybe.
That’s what I enjoy about these conspiracy theories. The people who push them never think them through. So Hungary doesn’t take Russian gas. So where does it get it to keep warm for the winter? Don’t if anyone’s noticed, Hungary’s landlocked in the middle of the EU. Be beholding to the EU nations? Can you imagine what that would involve? In Hungary’s position, better to be beholding to Russia.
There’s a few settlements in current Ukraine with a large minority of Hungarian speakers. although not enough to be a majority on anything like a County Council but still.
The socially fascist laws implemented from 2018 by Ukraine against minority language speakers hurts those with a full or mixed Hungarian identity. Of course Orban is going to be annoyed on their behalf. No-one else is sticking up for them, not in the rest of the EU, the UK or anywhere else.
Orban is one of a few EU heads saying that identity is a big deal to people and the EU can’t handle that and are being tossers about it. Heck, they can’t even bring themselves to drop the centralisation of levelling up funding and farmland owner subsidies. Why does the EU even have a centralised list of protected species like wolves, some countries might like ’em lots, some a little with occasional culls, or some not at all.
“So Hungary doesn’t take Russian gas. So where does it get it to keep warm for the winter? Don’t if anyone’s noticed, Hungary’s landlocked in the middle of the EU. Be beholding to the EU nations? Can you imagine what that would involve? In Hungary’s position, better to be beholding to Russia.”
I was re-reading the autobiography of the WW2 German general Hermann Balck recently, and he quotes the one time Slovakian leader Josef Tiso as saying ‘A small country cannot conduct its own foreign policy. It all depends on making a clear decision and sticking to it’. Of course he chose to cosy up to Nazi Germany and it cost him his neck, but I think the principle is sound.
– If Hungary is 85% dependent on Russian gas, why would Orban need bribing?
Bribed to get it up to that level. Why would someone who started out as an anti-communist student well versed in the joys of living under the Russian Peace (I’m sure he learned about 1956) make his country so reliant on Russia? For someone supposedly politically astute it’s completely mad. Could there be another, simpler, reason?
We see countries all over the world currently making themselves China’s bitches and we have no difficulty concluding corruption. It’s hardly an extreme notion out of conspiracy theory land, is it? Who is it who keeps going on about everything being defined by personal interests?
– Don’t if anyone’s noticed, Hungary’s landlocked in the middle of the EU.
Try looking at a map. It’s on the edge of the EU.
BiND – you’re obviously not a CIA plant as I’ve never seen any support for the absurd Ukraine War unlike PJF who is clearly straight out of Langley
The support for Orban is because I wish our Conservatives would do what he did. I want Murphy or Owen Jones to be kicked out of their sinecures. I want them to be cancelled. I want them to be brained by the right wing equivalent of a Pro Hamas March. He is not a particularly nice guy. But he is head and shoulders above any contemporary leftist.
Drunk, Van_Patten? I hope so.
I think it’s because he seems to stand up for ordinary Hungarians against the ruled-from-Davos establishments, in exactly the same way that our own self-esteemed leaders don’t.
@PJF
So Merkle was bribed? I’m willing to believe that. Being dependent on Russian gas doesn’t make for European uniqueness.
As for where Hungary is, I entered via Austria to get to Romania. Sure it does have the southern frontiers with the former Yugoslav nations, but a couple of decades back would one have wanted to be strategically dependent on them for passage of your energy needs?
Oh, by the way. My attitude to Germany. A country I’m obliged to cross to get to other places. So far, I’ve succeeded in doing so without actually having to stop. Just takes managing your fuel reserves & being willing to do some long haul driving. It was far better when there two of them.
PJF
Maybe you saw the CIA funded Con Coughlin pointing out that With the Hamas war diminishing support for Zelensky in the Senate it looks highly likely that Putin will win in Ukraine – so we’ll have destroyed our armed forces for no reason beyond protecting Biden’s business interests or those of his son? That’s a sustainable policy in your eyes?
The socially fascist laws implemented from 2018 by Ukraine against minority language speakers hurts those with a full or mixed Hungarian identity. Of course Orban is going to be annoyed on their behalf.
You do understand that Hungary has been inciting the ethnic Hungarians abroad for much longer than that, right? And why other countries might not want an outside country meddling in their internal affairs just like Orban doesn’t want the EU meddling in Hungary’s internal affairs?
@bis
“So Merkle was bribed? I’m willing to believe that. ”
The German situation predates her, though the decision to bin nuclear made things much worse. Schröder should take a lot of responsibility for German’s energy course and in his case it could hardly be more obvious how his personal incentives were aligned – since leaving office he’s worked for Nord Stream AG, Rosneft, and Gazprom!
In terms of outright corruption, there have also been a string of scandals about the CDU. And not just Russia, also Azerbaijan and even North Macedonia!
A fun one to dig into is a “Climate and Environment Protection Foundation” that was really a Russian front, set up by the state government of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (not a coincidence, it’s where Nord Stream 2 made landfall). This article has the basics but the details get much juicier if you look at the German language sources: https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/explainer-how-a-german-climate-fund-fought-us-sanctions-against-nord-stream-2/
It’s not new either, the USSR invested substantially in the anti-nuclear movement which became a major force in German politics – and quite idiotically (or conveniently, from a Soviet perspective) conflates atomic power and nuclear weapons.
Re Hungary – there’s no natural or geographical reason it’s so dependent on Russian gas. The dependency is a long-term thing because it is rooted in choices about where pipelines were built. But those were choices. Its neighbours made different choices and it’s worth asking why. For all the EU’s efforts to coerce Hungary into being a good little member of the bloc, it doesn’t have the history of “obey or the gas tap gets it” diplomacy that Russia has. At the very least, the country could have hedged bets by building alternative connections. Generally Hungary has been following a foreign policy course that involves a lot of bet-hedging – Atlanticist in the NATO sense, an EU member, but also good relations with Russia. There are merits to “pick a side and stick to it” but you could argue the alternative, that keeping options open is wise for a small country surrounded by potentially unfriendly ones. (A lot of Hungarians dream of reuniting a Greater Hungary, and neighbours with substantial Hungarian minorities – which is most of them – tend to be rather wary as a result.) It’s striking how much Hungary’s energy policy, by design, violates this general geopolitical strategy. Though I wouldn’t be too fast to blame it all on corruption – the Russian offer had price advantages that backed up the country’s industrial strategy.
The father of one of my Hungarian friends was born in the Ukraine, but it was Hungary, back then! I think there are plenty of modern Hungarians with a sentimental affinity for ‘Greater Hungary’, but view the likelihood of anything happening in that direction in the same way as we in the UK would view the reestablishment of the British Empire.
@Steve – “We are deliberately, and with malice aforethought, tidally locked into the EU’s sad, gay orbit …”
If you thought that Brexit meant anything other than the mere technicality of no longer being a member of the EU, then you were hopelessly deceived. In fact, it seems to be one of your current delusions.
” investments we could be making for the short and long term benefit of our country. ”
And you have been successfully deceived into thinking that it was the EU which was the obstacle to stuff you want rather than our own politicians. In fact, it seems the deceit was so succesful that you still believe it.
– Sure it does have the southern frontiers with the former Yugoslav nations, but a couple of decades back would one have wanted to be strategically dependent on them for passage of your energy needs?
Well, their main supply comes in via Bulgaria, which is not too happy with them at the moment. The Bulgarians have just slapped a levy on Russian gas through their part of the TurkStream pipeline headed for Serbia and Hungary. If they can find a practical way of imposing it (whose gas dis?) then either Hungary will have to pay more or Russia will have to profit less (probably the latter). And if some ship accidentally Chinese style drags its anchor along the bottom of the Black Sea . . .
Ironically, another chunk of Hungary’s supply comes via Ukraine, its eastern neighbour. Despite the war, Kyiv still makes billions transitting gas from its invader to Hungary (and others) while that country undermines its survival. No corruption involved there, eh? However, that contract won’t be renewed after next year. Hungary also receives Russian oil but that too is due to be curtailed by sanctions. If the war goes on, or just sanctions, it seems it will be tough for the Russians to fulfil the contract to build two new nuclear reactors for Hungary.
Hungary should shop around more. Indeed, other Europeans still with Gazprom supply contacts are already finding it cheaper sometimes to buy other gas at spot prices. And Europe has enough supply stored for this winter, even if it’s a tough one. Doesn’t fit the doom narrative, but hey.
‘And you have been successfully deceived into thinking that it was the EU which was the obstacle to stuff you want rather than our own politicians.’
Charles.
I’d argue that both the EU and the UK’s politicians are the obstacles. Thus giving the EU the flick got rid of one problem. Of course you now have the even more awkward problem of getting rid of your pestilent pollies.
“For all the EU’s efforts to coerce Hungary into being a good little member of the bloc, it doesn’t have the history of “obey or the gas tap gets it” diplomacy that Russia has.”
Thats only because it doesn’t have the gas tap to turn off. You can bet your bottom dollar that if the EU controlled Hungary’s energy supply then Orban would have been toast years ago, because the EU would have used it to force him out. Its the energy independence from the EU that allows Hungary to give the EU the finger. And on the other hand what exactly has Putin demanded of Hungary? Equivocation over Ukraine? I wish that he had such a hold over our politicians, if we were standing on the sidelines of that conflict we’d be far better off.
@Boganboy – “I’d argue that both the EU and the UK’s politicians are the obstacles.”
One of the ways of dealing with that is to play one off against the other, which is, unfortunately, no longer possible.
One of the ways of dealing with that is to play one off against the other, which is, unfortunately, no longer possible.
I’d love to see some examples where that technique worked in the past.