LMP: Hungary ‘is not a climate champion’

In reaction to a recent speech by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, LMP co-leader Erzsebet Schmuck told a press conference on Wednesday: “This isn’t football where there are winners and champions … our lives are at stake.” The question was, she added, “how much damage there’ll be and how far we can manage the losses”.

Schmuck rejected the prime minister’s statement that Hungary had made progress in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, insisting that while emissions had fallen between 1990 and 2013, they had increased again by 5 percent between 2014 and 2021. In addition, a further increase is expected due to plans of building three gas-fired power plants to serve new battery factories, she added.

Reducing emissions by 40 percent by 2030 from the 1990 baseline was not enough, Schmuck said, and urged a 65 percent target as well as a higher ratio than 21 percent of renewable energy by 2030.