There was majority support in the parliament committees for the appointment of Miklós Seszták to the position of Minister of National Development.

One of the priority tasks is to enhance the security of energy supply, which is impossible without a nuclear power plant, Miklós Seszták outlined at the hearings. He emphasised that the issue of gas dependence was a task that was to be dealt with as well. Considering the latter he noted it was necessary to continue developing the South Stream Gas Pipeline, to make the pipelines two-directional at the Hungarian-Croatian border and to modernise them and expand their capacity along the Hungarian-Romanian section.

The Minister of National Development Candidate recalled that the already approved National Energy Strategy and National Climate Change Strategy set the direction for the Government and the Ministry. The three-component energy mix of nuclear-coal-green energy in the energy strategy must clearly be kept; there is no reason to change it, he pointed out. As regards renewable energy resources he recalled Hungary’s commitment to increase the ratio of energy produced from renewable energy resources to 14.65% instead of the 13% prescribed by the EU by 2020 adding that the country had reached the 9.6% planned for 2013 by 2012.

The key task is to produce energy of an affordable price and if possible increasingly cheap not only for families but for the industry, too, which will be one of the important tasks for the next government cycle, he noted. Talking about the government’s asset management policy he said it was an important core principle “to produce public assets from any income from selling public assets”.

In the previous government cycle the Hungarian state successfully reinforced its presence in strategic companies, he added. As examples he mentioned the acquisition of a Mol share package, shares in Rába, the gas division of E.On and the re-acquisition of Antenna Hungária. These acquisitions have an important role in protecting and continuing the reduction of overheads, he pointed out.

(Ministry of National Development)