The government wants to make “new and fair deals” with energy distributors rather than expel them from the market or nationalize them, said János Lázár, head of the prime minister’s office. Lázár added that profit levels and operation costs should be matched with household income levels. “The earlier business model is over,” Lázár said. He suggested that energy providers should be “satisfied with a fair amount of profit in line with a European business model.” There’s considerable suspicion that Budapest has been trying to centralize control over energy prices in order to lessen the impact of the economic crisis on ordinary Hungarians.
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