Viktor Orban is a conservative lodstar. Now he wants to fix the price of eggs.

Prime Minister Victor Urban from Hungary was a pioneer in many issues dear to conservatives in the United States, and he trained for years against “madness of immigration”, “The Woke Virus” and “Madness of the Sexes”.

Now Mr. Urban participates in an effort deviating from the conservative Orthodox opinion that the state must remain outside the economy: he is trying to appoint him The price of eggs And other goods.

Unable to curb the inflation rate in Hungary, which is the highest in the European Union, and to counter the increase in support of a political competitor, Mr. Urban ordered last week to noise in prices on 30 basic foodstuffs. He accused supermarkets of manipulating prices, especially on eggs and butter.

Mr. Urban said that the Hungarian government will start this week in supermarkets to force prices to reduce their prices by ensuring that what they receive from basic foods does not exceed 10 percent over what they cost in wholesale. He said that the current coding of eggs was “unacceptable” 40 percent.

“Prices do not rise, are raised,” Mr. Urban thunder, blames inflation on grocery stores, the largest in Hungary foreign companies such as British Tesco and Austria.

Hungary was welcomed by many American conservatives (President Trump) as a beacon of how to manage a state. But the step made by Mr. Urban confirms how he struggled to manage the thing that many Hungarians are interested in more: their sick country’s economy.

Economic problems weakened Mr. Urban at home and abroad. Hungarian Economic Research Institute, independent body, I mentioned recently The business confidence index “slipped to the lowest level in 50 months.”

These problems have led to the popularity of Mr. Urban before the elections in the next year, which, according to some opinion polls, may lose the ruling FIDESz party in front of a beginner opposition movement led by Peter Magear, a former party’s loyal.

Mr. Magiar has risen to national fame as a leader of a mass movement based on Mr. Urban’s convictions due to the “amazing cost crisis of living”, its stalled public services and an economic theatrical field in favor of companies controlled by the prime minister’s relatives and relatives Political allies.

In Budapest on Saturday, Mr. Magiar drew tens of thousands of anti -government demonstrators to a gathering celebrating the Founding Hungary Revolution for the year 1848, much more than he attended a similar event earlier in the day by Mr. Urban.

Mr. Magiar mocked Marton Nagy, Minister of Economy, for his attempt to dictate the price of the sour cream, which is an essential component, through “rotating numbers with a ink pen to know the amount of the price that can be reduced” while Mr. Urban, “his family and friends becomes” rich in stealing your money “. The roar of the crowd.

Erika Lapos, the retired who traveled more than 100 miles with her husband from their home in northeastern Hungary to attend Mr. Magiar’s gathering, and blame corruption in the weak economy. “It is not just a scandal, it is a crime,” she said.

Until recently, Mr. Urban has succeeded in organizing criticism of his economic record and corruption by blaming the high prices in the war in Ukraine. He also sought to focus the public’s attention on issues such as illegal immigration and its wrong accusations that the European Union was trying to transform sexual or gay children.

Agoston Maraz, director of the Nizhoubont Institute, who is conducting polls to capture the surveys of Mr. Urban, said the war and immigration in Ukraine no longer dominates the voters’ concerns.

“The issue of inflation is now much most important,” he said.

However, he is keen to change the issue and prepare the base of Mr. Urban Governorate, his supporters in Parliament on Tuesday amended a law on the General Assembly to ban gay marches, which is the latest in a series of efforts to target the LGBTQ community in the country.

But there is no escape from economic facts.

In general, the prices of Hungarian food in February, according to the official figures issued last week, were 7.1 percent higher than the previous year, which means that food is now more than 80 percent of the five years, according to the accounts made by GB.

Mr. Maraz said that, according to his institute, Vidsz is still a strong progress to Mr. Magiar Tisa, but he was subject to the economy.

Economic problems also weakened Hungary’s hand in its long struggle with the European Union over the sanctions against Russia – Mr. Urban wants to remove them – and a group of other issues related to the rule of law, democracy and corruption.

After money to fill a large hole in its budget, Hungary does not have a real opportunity to obtain financial assistance from Mr. Trump, despite their close political relations, and needs increasing funds from the European Union, which freezes more than $ 20 billion allocated to it years ago.

In an explicit warning to Mr. Urban, who angered European leaders by constantly defaming them, the European Union’s executive arm on December 31 took about one billion euros, or about $ 1.1 billion, from the froid money from the table, saying that the time limit had ended.

On Friday, after weeks of attacks on the bloc carried out by Mr. Urban as an “empire” of the “contestants” that never bowed his country, Hungary quietly dried its power and agreed to allow the renewal of European sanctions imposed on more than 2,400 Russian individuals and entities.

Zoltan Bougatsa, a professor of economics at West Hungary, said that Mr. Urban against Brussels against Brussels plays well with his national political base but “does not help in paying bills.”

Before the European Union freezes the largest part of its financing, he added that “the money from Brussels has led most growth during what Mr. Urban calls the golden years,” a high period of growth and relatively stable prices during his first decade in power before the printed epidemic.

After slipping into the recession last year, the Hungary’s economy grows again, although at a very slow pace. Mr. Bugsa said that the investment, the main driver of future growth, has decreased. The budget hole is likely to be a gap that the European Union criticized last month as a “excessive state of deficit” – a balloon if he did before the last elections in 2022, Mr. Urban offers voters bulletins before next year.

Mr. Urban announced last month what he described as “the largest tax reduction program in Europe”, and promised to exempt mothers with two or more income children and give retirees a deduction on the value -added tax they pay on food.

By 27 percent, Hungary has the highest such tax in the European Union, and many economists say the easiest way to reduce food prices is to reduce it, as well as a special tax of 4.5 percent on retailers.

But doing this would increase the budget deficit at a time when the European Union or the United States offer money.

The standard and poor evaluation agency said in November that it reduced its view of Hungary to negativity, due to a large extent because it “may eventually lose a large amount of European Union’s absent money.”

“Regardless of the anti -European Union’s rhetoric, Lagos Parkphens, Urban realizes that he still has to pressure some juice from Brussels,” said Lagos Parkus, former Finance Minister.

He said that Mr. Urban saw inflation and other problems completely through a political lens. He said: “His government has created inflation with loose spending, but it lies the voters that he was imported from abroad”-before the supermarkets, most of which are owned by foreigners, and high energy prices due to the war in Ukraine.

When sensing the political danger in the future, Mr. Urban quickly responded to the issuance of official data that was found that the inflation rate on an annual basis of Hungary rose in February to 5.6 percent.

“We will put an end to increasing excessive and unjustified prices,” he said. He did not specify how to do this, but the State Statistics Office in Hungary on Wednesday said that the intervention of Mr. Urban had already reduced egg prices by approximately 20 percent.

GEZA Sebestyen, head of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a university affiliated with the conservative government, said, Mr. Orban is unlikely to send inspectors to punish store owners who have not said prices. He said: “It is clear that socialism does not work, and Eastern Europe knows that better than anyone.”

But Peter Broad, former governor of the Central Bank in Hungary, fears that Mr. Urban will reach the tools of the Communist era in what is supposed to be a free market.

He said: “Instead of Communist Goulash,” in reference to the reformulation of the country’s peculiarities for the socialism imposed by the Soviets in the 1960s and 1970s, “We got capitalism.”