As an energy, economic and food crisis has been spreading since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, the Hungarian conservative weekly Mandarin evokes a “crisis cocktail” on the cover of its July 7 edition. To illustrate its point, the magazine brings together a pierced oil barrel with a straw and a small parasol, symbols of summer beverages. According to the title of the main article, the world is moving in “stormy waters”, in between “energy crisis in Europe” et “international economic cataclysm”.
An energy lawyer explains that, despite the European embargo on Russian petroleum products, in which Hungary does not participate, Moscow “continues to grow rich thanks to exports to India and China” and that the Old Continent “already feels the lack”, car “there are no sources anywhere else [de produits pétroliers] replacement in sufficient quantity”.
Asked about Hungary’s management of the crisis, an economics professor asserts that the freezing of the prices of petrol and certain basic foodstuffs, the control of energy prices and the multiple successive increases in key interest rates “contain, of course, inflation”, who “could reach 25% without government measures”, but that the country “will have to live a long time yet” with the inflationary phenomenon.
Supply difficulties
In a column on the sidelines of the main article, an analyst working for a think tank close to the Orban government tackles Western sanctions “ideological”, who “penalize Europe more than those against whom they are applied” et “threaten Europe of recession”.
Another article deciphers the food component of the crisis. The conflict paralyzes trade in “fourth world exporter” cereals, while the Russian blockade prevents the shipment of “20 to 25 million tons of wheat to international markets”. The UN proposes the establishment of a secure corridor, but Moscow “conditions its approval on the clearance of Black Sea ports” et Kiev “fears that Russia will use the corridor to attack Odessa”. Outraged “the explosion in the prices of wheat, sunflower oil and corn”, the war in Ukraine “emphasizes” supply difficulties “already considerable” in the Middle East and Africa, exposing these two regions to “economic and societal crises of unprecedented magnitude”, fears Mandarin.