Protected fuel prices are not coming back, PM Magyar said

HUNGARY - In Brief 26 Jul 2026 by Istvan Racz

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Now that the Straits (now in plural, including Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb) are closed or semi-closed once again, and Brent is back up close to $100 per barrel, the potential return of protected fuel prices, i.e. the retail price caps on the two basic types of gasoline and diesel for all cars and trucks with a domestic licence plate, is coming up again. After all, even though the price caps were lifted in late June, after three months of existence, the Minister for the Economy and Energy was authorised by parliament to reintroduce those if necessary. And fuel prices clearly represent a politically sensitive issue, as analysts (including us) have pointed out in the recent past.However, the always proactive PM Magyar surprised his audience towards the end of a press conference on Thursday by delivering a well-charted presentation about domestic fuel prices, essentially concluding that the government was not preparing the reintroduce fuel price caps, despite fuel prices were clearly on a rising trend. At that point, retail prices were standing by HUF1-2 per litre below the old price caps (HUF595 for gasoline and HUF615 for diesel). Since then, they rose to HUF2-3 per litre above the old caps.Essentially, Mr. Magyar said that fixing prices at the level of the old caps would cost the government budget HUF50bn per month (meaning 1.3% of GDP per year). This was quite obviously derived from the previously stated fact that the three-month existence of the protected prices between March and June cost HUF150bn to the budget, but the costs obviously depend on a number of factors, including mainly the price of imported crude oil. He brought up evidence that at that moment, domestic fu...