Weekly Briefing, Vol. 26, No. 3 (HU), February 2020
State of the Nation Address with a Focus on the Climate Protection Plan of the Hungarian Government
The topic of climate change and climate protection has recently become more and more important in the political debates of the European Union and Hungary. This briefing mainly focuses on the climate protection plan of the Hungarian government and the public opinions of how the climate protection measures goals should be implemented and the goals achieved. The plan was presented in the framework of the Prime Minister’s annual ‘state of the nation’ address, delivered by him last week. In the meantime, the Századvég Research Institute carried out a survey closely related to the topic of climate protection and the results of this survey are analyzed in the briefing too. Since the implementation and further climate protection measures need substantial funding, the briefing covers this topic too. In this context, one of the fiercely debated questions is how the so-called Green Deal presented and supported by the European Commission, will distribute the financial burdens of climate protection. At the same time, the briefing also touches upon other elements of the speech with a focus on those with relevance to the social development of Hungary.
- The main topics of the ‘state of the nation’ address
The state of nation speech delivered by the Hungarian Prime Minister the 16th February 20, 2020, centered on basically three main topics: government measures related to climate change, family protection, and public debt financing. The emphasis was clearly set on climate change measures, however, topics like family protection and public debt financing related issues were broached broadly in the speech too. In the context of public debt, a new state bond program was announced, that according to the plans would be called the ‘green bonds program’ since the funds could be only used for ‘climate-friendly’ programs. Even in this case, we can see that the plans are linked to climate goals, thus it can be argued climate protection is high on the agenda of the Hungarian government.
According to the plans, new elements will be added to the family protection plan without specifying the exact date of the implementation of the new rules:
- Income tax exemption for women with 3 children,
- Children care allowance in the first month after birth (based on the former salary or wage as 100 percent) will be raised from 70 percent to 100 percent,
- Free language courses and driver license training will be provided for women on maternity leave.
As for the government measures tackling climate change, the proposals were more concrete and, in some cases, exact dates were given for their implementation:
- Illegal landfills are to be liquidated (date of implementation: 1 July 2020).
- Single-way plastics are to be banned in Hungary.
- The conditions for large scale recycling glass and plastic bottles will be improved and optimized.
- After every new baby, 10 trees will be planted in Hungary which has the goal to significantly increase the forest areas in the country.
- From 2022 on, only electric buses will be certified by the Hungarian authorities and put into circulation.
- Until 2020, small and medium enterprises will receive 32 Billion HUF, to subsidy the spread of new environment-friendly technologies and speed up the utilization of renewable energies in the Hungarian economy.
- Until 2030, solar power plants are to sextuple their capacities.
As we can see the focus is clearly set on tackling climate change, as we predicted a few months ago when the climate change demonstrations became stronger in Europe. In that analysis, we pointed out the need for governmental reactions to this challenge, and now we can see that the responses are already embedded in the next year’s strategy, firstly in the state of the nation speech.
- The public assessment of the climate protection measures
When it comes to devising and implementing government strategy for climate protection, the public opinion is crucial. The latest survey on the public opinion of how the climate protection measures should be implemented and financed was carried out by the Századvég Research Institute in January-February 2020, where 1.000 people were included in the questionnaire. The main reason behind this survey was the clear goal of the European Commission to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. To attain this goal, the EU member states must significantly reduce their CO2 emission and thus spend funds on these purposes. In other words, the measures to be taken by the EU member states will cut into the budget and the distribution of costs matters.
In the survey, there were seven questions. In the first set five agree/disagree questions were raised, and the results can be found in Table 1. As for the multiple-choice questions, there were two; one of them addressed the question of whether the EU solution should distribute the financial burden of adjustment equally among the EU member states or the costs should be imposed on the biggest polluter countries. 77 percent of survey participants thought that the costs should be distributed based upon the principle ‘the higher the pollution, the more the polluter must pay’, while 22 percent voted for equal burden sharing, and 2 percent did not know or did not reply to the question. (In the agree/disagrees question, one with a similar topic was raised.)
What we have to understand from the European context of fighting against climate change is that the European Commission intends to finance climate protection by relying on centralized EU funds. According to the plans of the European Commission, this fund is to be financed by member state contributions. Based on the proposal of the European Commission, the EC wants to mobilize around 1.000 billion euro for these purposes. Hungary would just receive 880 million euros, which is 1.1 percent of the entire budget, which seems to be very unproportioned. The main reason for the distribution of funds can be explained this way: those countries whose CO2 emission is the highest at the moment would be allocated to substantial funds and those countries who had been more successful in cutting the emissions would receive moderate sums. That is why the results of the survey could be efficiently utilized when negotiating with the European Commission later.
| Table 1.
The agree/disagree questions and results on the redistribution of climate protection in the Hungarian public |
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| Rather agrees | Rather doesn’t agree | Doesn’t know, doesn’t reply | ||
| Not the population should pay for the costs of climate protection but the biggest polluters: large firms and countries with big emission | 91% | 7% | 2% | |
| Introduction of CO2 tax imposed on properties, and the increase in taxes on gasoline | 81% | 16% | 3% | |
| To reduce energy consumption, energy prices for residential customers should be increased | 84% | 13% | 3% | |
| The Hungarian government must intervene to liquidate illegal landfills. | 98% | 1% | 1% | |
| Source: Századvég Research Institute, https://szazadveg.hu/hu/kutatasok/az-alapitvany-kutatasai/piackutatas-kozvelemeny-kutatas/a-tobbseg-szerint-a-legnagyobb-szennyezoknek-kellene-vallalniuk-a-klimavedelem-koltsegeit | ||||
- Summary
As we delineated above the state of the nation focuses on climate change and related measures, but the Prime Minister touched upon other topics as well. He referred i.e. to the 100 years old Trianon treaty that was forced upon Hungary and led to significant territorial losses. He added that the nation not only survived this decision, and it is not surrounded by enemies anymore, but Hungary was able to build a broad cooperation with Slovakia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Croatia and is able to forge alliances with those countries, he stressed. He envisioned an alliance of Central European nations, built upon their national interests which would enable us to protect ourselves from enemies, regardless of whether they come from the East or the West, he concluded. Other topics broached in the speech include economic achievements of recent years, social injustice and Hungarian dependency on the German economy.
As for the clime protection plans of Hungary, the implementation of the goals has two sides, the government measures, and financing along with the EU funds and jointly drafted goals. These two sides must compromise later since the European Commission is able to significantly speed up or put these plans on hold. That is why the final EU budget is crucial for Hungarian interests. The intentions of the European Commission are not enough alone, since let us not forget that the EU budget is jointly adopted by the European Commission and the European Parliament. The European Parliament just rejected the plans of the European Commission for the next reasons: the draft budget was not able to cover the planned expenditures, and a budget without Green Deal, Digital Transformation, the stronger international role of the European Union would be an empty promise, the European Parliament argues. The cut in regional and agricultural funds is rejected by the European Parliament, as it is argued by the European Parliament, since the funds are vital to diminish the regional differences among with EU regions.
In other words, the proposal of the European Commission will not be the final one, thus there is still room for maneuvering for Hungary when it comes to the implementation of its climate protection goals.