© Getty Images He pointed to Ukraine and the armed conflict in Iran as causes of the difficulty.
With parliamentary elections five weeks away, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban urged the European Union to revoke restrictions on Russian energy resources and convened an urgent cabinet meeting to tackle increasing fuel costs, pointing to Ukraine and the military conflict in the Middle East as the origins of the issue, Reuters informs.
“The Ukrainian oil blockade and the conflict in the Middle East are causing prices to go up. Europe needs to acknowledge reality: we must reconsider and remove all restrictions on Russian energy,” Orban stated.
Despite a number of actions designed to please the electorate, Orban's Fidesz party is falling behind the center-right Tisza party in the majority of surveys. Higher oil prices due to the war in Iran have driven up diesel and petrol prices in Hungary, intensifying the difficulties Orban is confronting prior to the election.
Orban mentioned that he had summoned a cabinet session “to safeguard Hungarian families” from elevated fuel costs. He affirmed that fuel prices must not be permitted to escalate “to an unbearable level.”
As a reminder, on March 9, the cost of WTI crude oil surpassed $100 a barrel for the initial occasion since July 2022 and persisted in its ascent. Shortly thereafter, WTI and Brent were already being traded at over $107 per barrel. Simultaneously, US President Donald Trump expresses the belief that the brief increase in cost is a modest “payment for safety and security” in the US and globally. In his assessment, prices will rapidly diminish once “the Iranian nuclear peril is eradicated.”