Hungarian government's latest national consultation launched

The latest national consultation has been launched, the Hungarian government announced on its Facebook page on Friday. The postal service will begin delivering the consultation's questionnaire to every mailbox in the country on Friday, and the deadline for sending the completed questionnaire back is 10 January 2024.

Each of the eleven questions of the consultation begins with a statement about what "Brussels" has been doing or wants to do, and the government is asking people for their opinion about the following topics (among others):

• Brussels wants to do away with Hungary's extra profit tax, as well as the subsidies on household utility bills, the interest rate freeze and the Child Protection Act.
• Brussels has been providing aid to Palestinian organisations, which has also reached Hamas.
• Brussels would send more arms to Ukraine and wants to admit Ukraine to the EU and allow Ukrainian grain in.
• They want to influence Hungarian politics with money sent from Brussels and overseas.

The first detail about the potential topics to be covered in the consultation emerged at the end of October, when government spokeswoman Alexandra Szentkirályi announced that the new consultation would cover three economy-related topics as well, because "Brussels wants to scrap" Hungary's subsidised household utility bills, the interest rate freeze and the extra profit tax. Since then, it has been announced that the question of Ukrainian grain import and of Ukraine's EU accession will also be included. Each of these was announced one by one by government politicians.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said earlier that the new national consultation was needed so that he could "steer Hungary's ship into the Brussels harbour even in the midst of gale-force winds".