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Hungary: with its national climate strategy, is Orban going green?

It is one of the first measures that Viktor Orban had taken when he returned to power in 2010: he had abolished the Ministry of the Environment. This shows how passionate the Hungarian Prime Minister was about ecology. O surprise, Viktor Orban has just announced the launch of a national climate strategy. Why this green shift? Why does Viktor Orban don a green suit?

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban seems to have learned from the last municipal elections which took place in October 2019. His party has lost a dozen cities, including Budapest, which elected an environmental mayor. This new elected official, Gergely Karacsony, wants to tackle the climate emergency, and he has promised to transform Budapest into a green city.

And then, the nationalist right of Orban realizes that it is losing audience with young people. The majority of its voters are over 65 years of age. This worries some right-wing leaders, including the Secretary of State for the Family, Katalin Novak, who wants the party to be more attractive to young people. Hence this national climate strategy launched by Viktor Orban: this is a theme that interests the young generation. Perhaps this will allow the Hungarian right to win new voters.

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What are the main lines of this climate strategy ?

The objective is that 90% of energy production is carbon neutral by 2030. The government wants to focus on nuclear power - which already provides 40% of electricity in Hungary - and on solar energy. Another objective: carbon dioxide emissions should have fallen by 40% compared to the 1990 level. In general, the government wants to encourage the Hungarians to consume less energy. Out of the three million households in Hungary, there are still 200,000 dwellings that are heated with collective district heating. This means that the temperature is constant: it is 27 ° C all winter and the locals cannot regulate it.

As the winters are getting milder and colder, they are forced to open the windows to make it cooler. Hence an enormous waste of energy. The government has set up a financial assistance program for residents who wish to transform their facility. 5,000 homes have already benefited. The aim is to extend this program to all households wishing to switch to individual heating.

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In Austria, the Greens are participating in a coalition government with the conservative party. Could this scenario be envisaged in Hungary ? Can we imagine that in the future, Viktor Orban will govern with the greens ?

Not at all. For Viktor Orban, there is no question of governing with the green! He said it clearly. Because, for him, “ the Hungarian Greens are like a watermelon: they are green on the outside, but red on the inside. Orban therefore considers the Hungarian ecologists as leftists. Which does not correspond to reality: the two Hungarian ecological parties are rather center-right.

Viktor Orban wants to green his program, but he has no desire to share power. And he who asserts himself as a Christian conservative has found a way to appropriate the question of ecology. " Climate policy is a Christian theme " is what he says today.

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