The number of responses to the survey now stands at 1.276 million, a record high, he added. The government cannot stop Brussels alone, he said. It will only do so if voters continue to help out, he added. He noted the European Commission had insisted the survey was misleading.

But the real question is whether the commission or the Hungarian government is misleading people. Lázár said it would be unrealistic to argue that the Hungarian government could mislead 1.3 million people. The Brussels body is trying to “fool Hungarian voters” by stating that energy price liberalisation would be beneficial to Hungary.

The experience of Hungarian consumers shows the opposite: over twenty years, in a liberalised market, prices always went up. It is right for the Hungarian government to fight for its right to influence gas and electricity prices. Commenting on the question of migrant quotas in the national consultation survey, he said the mandatory quota is an invitation to migrants.

Lázár said that in the next year, this is likely to be the greatest dispute between the Hungarian government and the commission, and also the hardest to resolve.

Lázár said that the text of an EU development document on the current agenda contained a proclamation tying the future success of the EU to the number of migrants arriving in the bloc, but Hungary’s standpoint is that “the fewer migrants are needed the better”, and it will therefore veto the document. Whenever the EU tries to legitimise immigration in various documents Hungary will oppose it, he added.

Republished with permission of Hungary Matters, MTI’s daily newsletter.

MTI photo: Koszticsák Szilárd