Upsides to living in Hungary and regional pipeline geopolitics
why it ain't so bad here and how pipeline geopolitics plays a role in i
I had to run some errands today. My annual medical is coming up, so I needed a referral from my General Practitioner to run some blood tests. I have also neglected to pay my annual vehicle tax and have forgotten the username and password for the customer care portal created for Hungarian citizens, through which official documents can be submitted from both ends.
With a deep sigh, I took off from work and expected to spend the best part of half a day battling Hungarian bureaucracy, which, even if you speak the local lingo, is a daunting task.
I called my GP’s office, where the friendly receptionist lady assured me, my referral would be ready by the time I got there. She was true to her word and I was in and out in 30 seconds. Then it was off to the tax office, where everything I needed to sort out was taken care of in under 20 minutes, including waiting time, until my number was called (5 minutes at most). In the air-conditioned waiting room, there were only 3 people ahead of me, and there was a young and friendly lady assistant who helped people choose the right number for whatever issue they wanted to sort out with the tax office.
Maybe I was lucky today, but all my interactions with Hungarian officialdom were quick and painless, even pleasant at times, with all the nice ladies that were helping me a real delight to interact with. I can say with some confidence, that this wouldn’t have been the case a couple of decades ago and even the tax office has been nicely renovated, clean and efficient. The last time I had such an easy time sorting official paperwork out, I was living in Singapore.
In contrast, I still have nightmares about the ninth circle of hell, that is Irish bureaucracy. I once stood in line for half a day, to have my residence permit renewed and I still recall the utter puzzlement I felt, when I was told by the Gas Board, that in order to transfer the contract to a new person, the only way to do so was to call a line from a phone booth within the office, of which there was only one and nobody picked up on the other end. It was not possible to sort the matter out in person in Ireland’s second city, nor was it possible to do so over the phone in the comfort of your home. I had to stand there, in a dinky booth, like an idiot, for an hour, until someone in Dublin picked up the phone.
Hungarian healthcare is objectively worse, than it was before the pandemic. Waiting times for non-urgent care can stretch to months and it seems that healthcare workers are just burnt out and no longer really care about patients.
However, when the covid pandemic hit, I was hospitalised, put on oxygen and spent 3 weeks on the covid ward. I received excellent care and fully recovered. My father had a stroke, my mother had brain surgery, my little niece was born with a heart condition, needed several open heart surgeries and she’s scheduled for another one in September, where they will close up a hole in her heart and insert a new pacemaker. In each instance, me and members of my family received excellent, first-rate care from competent doctors and recovered from whatever ailments brought us there. So, whilst waiting lists for treating and diagnosing chronic conditions are getting longer, serious and urgent care is generally still excellent in Hungary, not to mention covered by payroll taxes, so in general, you pay nothing or very little for major surgeries and treatments, out of pocket. It is a different story for chronic conditions, where the decidedly Tory / Republican Fidesz party is ushering people into the private care sector, where the very same doctors, often using the same equipment, charge you for the privilege of not waiting in line for months.
In any case, my point is, that despite the apocalyptic gnashing of teeth coming from young Hungarians, most foreign journalists and reporters, not to mention the forever negative people of reddit, Hungary remains, in general, a civilised and pleasant place to live. Sure, there are countries out there that excel in areas, where it falls short, but that’s pretty much true of any country I can think of. For instance, nothing could induce me to live in Switzerland, where they’ll fine you for flushing the toilet after 10 pm, in your own apartment! As for Austria, which is generally held up as “bezzegország” to Hungarians, a term denoting a country where everything is better than back home (Hungary’s Canada, if you will) and where people threaten to move to, whenever Fidesz wins yet another election, my brother works there and has just started his own small business, in conjunction with one of his Austrian colleagues.
Setting up a business in Austria was an absolute nightmare, involving medieval-level red tape, with literal guilds doing everything they can to stop that from happening. In the end, they had to involve a legal firm, which had to threaten the guild and local government offices in order to get their application approved. They really thought of every possible obstacle to stop them and it later transpired, that the owner of the firm they currently work at, was behind the campaign to stop them registering a competing business. Austrians also complain that their healthcare is no better than ours, with long waiting lists (also a problem in the UK and Canada) and incompetence on all levels. Although Austrians have much higher salaries, than Hungarians, they also pay a lot more in taxes and must comply with often ridiculously complicated rules, regulations and local municipality bylaws.
Unlike in Hungary, energy prices in Austria weren’t frozen in the wake of the Ukraine war and energy companies promptly proceeded to charge extortionate rates, ending in bankruptcy for quite a few people. My brother’s business partner was sent a settlement / reconciliation invoice from the Austrian Gas Board, for the winter heating and it came to over 3000 euros! That was the difference between what it would have cost him before the war and what it now cost him, well over a month’s salary in his line of work. I’m hearing that many older Austrians on fixed incomes have stopped heating their homes and as for the UK, heating was never much in vogue over there, many people preferring woolly jumpers and hot-water bottles under the duvet instead.
So, whilst I often criticize the current government for dumb stuff they do, their policy of protecting Hungarians from extortionate energy prices, which only really go into the coffers of billionaire investors, has been an unmitigated success. Just to bring those, that aren’t aware, up to speed, the current Fidesz government froze energy and water prices at set levels a few years ago, well before the Ukrainian war broke out and maintained a price cap for consumers, though not businesses, all throughout the wild energy price fluctuations of the Ukraine war and subsequent sanctions. Hungary still gets a lot of pipeline gas and some oil from Russia, as does Austria, Slovakia and Serbia, which is why you see these countries taking a largely neutral stance in the Ukraine war. In any case, the Ukrainians charge extortionate transit fees to allow the Russians to send energy through pipelines running through their territory, so alternative pipelines have been constructed running through Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia, bringing gas and oil not just from the Russian space, but also from Azerbaijan and Central Asia, providing better energy security for the region.
Poland and co. took a different route, constructing a pipeline to Norway instead, whilst other countries, like Italy, rely more on African gas and oil and LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) from North Africa and the Middle East. All that is fine, but the cost is considerably higher than for piped gas from Russia, so energy-intensive industries, like chemicals, are leaving Europe and setting up shop in North America instead. BASF, Germany’s chemical manufacturing giant is closing all of its German plants and relocating them to the US instead. For Europe, the price for supporting Ukraine is de-industrialisation and increased dependence on the USA as a supplier not only for energy, but also for
intermediary and finished chemical products.