VIENNA, May 16. /TASS/. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Monday said the energy crisis and increases or interest rates will lead to an extended recession in Europe.
He made the comment when speaking at the National Assembly, the country’s legislature.
The conflict in Ukraine, he said, and EU sanctions on Russia have caused an energy crisis.
"That, along with interest rate hikes in the US, has set off an era of high inflation," Infostart quoted Orban as saying. "All that is leading us into an era of recession, an economic downturn."
"Europe, the peoples of the West and we, the Hungarians, have entered an era of danger," he went on to say. "This decade will be an era of a lack of security and wars."
The Hungarian government, led by Viktor Orban, last week said it wouldn’t support the sixth package of sanctions on Russia, which includes an oil embargo, as it was proposed by the European Commission. Budapest seeks a delay for itself in imposing these restrictions, an exemption from sanctions with respect to the supply of oil coming through pipelines, as well as compensation for the costs that will arise during a shift to other sources of the commodity.