The collapse of Communism in 1989 and Hungary’s membership into the EU in 2004 set Hungary on a neoliberal economic path in the energy sector. This chapter describes the effort to reduce energy prices for Hungarian households after the 2010 parliamentary elections. There was a concerted political drive to lower household utility rates after years of price increases. The result was a new political-economic system that placed the state at the center of the energy system, rather than market actors. Hungary’s growing reliance on Russian gas and nuclear power makes energy both as a social and a geopolitical issue.
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