Many Hungarians take pride in what they deem to be an outstanding culture of innovation, though given the great mixture of ethnic groups within the historical Kingdom – and even in today's truncated state - it's debatable exactly how much can be attributed to pure 'Magyar' genius.
But one thing's for sure: when it comes to [mis]using statistics to support government propaganda, the current administration is as adept as any on the planet.
The Ideal Socialist Worker stands guard outside a (coal-fired) power station - no doubt an inspiration to everyone in the next arriving shift.
Unfortunately the Socialist era industry was not always the most energy efficient (and I'm not too sure about the safety standards of the worker's footwear either).
I'm sure everyone here is familiar with the adage 'Lies, damned lies and statistics', which some attribute to the US writer Mark Twain. (Wikipedia says he attributed it to Benjamin Disraeli.)
I was reminded of this last week, when I read a piece in Magyar Nemzet (do I need to mention that publication's editorial line?) headlined 'Inbound Chinese Tourism is Booming' and oozing positivity about Chinese tourist numbers.
Apparently, Hungary welcomed 110,000 Chinese tourists last year, four times the number of 2022. Better still, so far this year, 76,000 Chinese have spent 210,000 guest nights in the country. (I presume that's up to the end of May. The 'journalist' concerned did not make this clear.)
Hmmm. Pretty cool, eh?
Well, actually, no. That is to say - and I'm sure many of you have already cottoned on where this is leading - but if the Hungarian tourism industry was really counting on Chinese tourists, we'd have about enough business for four hotels in Budapest, a couple on Balaton and an Airbnb in Szeged, Szentendre and Eger.
To put this in context, I turned to the Hungarian Statistics Office and … oh dearie me! I see the new boss at KSH has decided to make an impact. That means they don't give the annual figures, and neither is the page in English any more. Now you have to know some Hungarian to get the numbers. <Sigh. Why do new bosses always have to change SOMETHING quickly, and usually something which already works fine?> .
I'm not adding up all those months to the nearest decimal point: A quick run through them means Hungary recorded in the region of 22 million guest-nights last year. Even in February, the 'worst' month, the country had more than 1 million visitors slumbering their nights away in Magyar land.
Now, let's just suppose we get 0.5 million guest-nights from China this year – I'm not saying that's not welcome in the trade, of course - but in the context of the grand scheme of Hungarian tourism, it ain't so much - like 2.3% of the total.
And that's before we start to assess their daily spend, versus, say, that of a German or American visitor.
Booming? Hmmmm.
Another one of my favourite bubbles to burst is Hungary's record regarding greenhouse gas emissions.
I'm not going to battle through all the numbers again, so I'll use some data I found a couple of years back, because the point is just the same.
Now go to any energy conference (or 'summit' as they love to call 'em these days) in Budapest, and I can guarantee the first speaker connected to government (and that usually means the first full stop) will insert somewhere near the top of the speech that Hungary is among the top ten EU member states when it comes to reducing green house gas (GHG) emissions.
And just to reassure you this is kosher, they cite European Union statistics, no less.
As Péter Kaderják, Minister of State for Energy Affairs and Climate Policy a year or two back put it: “It feels there are huge misconceptions out there regarding the country's green credentials.
“Sometimes we get the feeling that Hungary's achievements are not fully understood. Indeed, sometimes we hear that nobody is doing anything in Hungary for climate protection. We definitely do not share this view,” he told a press briefing in early 2020.
Kaderják, back then, cited the EU's 2019 report on greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory, which revealed Hungary has cut its GHG emissions by 32% between 1990 – 2017.
Yup, that right, by almost one third. This compared to an EU average of just 23.5% over the same period.
He even chided Austria, Spain, Portugal and Ireland for their miserable GHG track record. “Within the community we have member states that could not reduce even a tonne, not a percentage, not even a tonne of emissions in the last 30 years,” he railed.
And it was true. I checked the report. Hungary wasn't top of the class in terms of GHG reduction – it was ninth – but hey, that's better than 18 other EU members.
But can Hungarians beat their chests with pride over their 'green' efforts here?
Heh, heh, heh: not really. You see it all depends on which statistics you decide to compare, or more accurately, which year you choose as the starting point for your comparisons.
Because Hungary, along with all its former east bloc allies, flatters to deceive when measuring GHG emissions from a base year of 1990. For this was the very year when much heavy, highly inefficient industry dating from communist times suddenly met the real world - and real oil prices.
A close study of the EU inventory reveals Hungary cut its GHG emissions from 94 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 1990 to 64 million by 2017. The difference, 30 million tonnes, equates to that impressive 32% reduction cited by Kaderják. But of this, 19 million tonnes - almost two-thirds of the total - was achieved by 1995, within just five years of the post-communist transition, when vast swaths of energy guzzling heavy industry closed down.
Hungary certainly has become less polluting and more climate friendly in the past three decades, and the big push on solar energy in recent years will be adding to this.
But the statistics for GHG reductions look good primarily because of the reaction to economic forces in the early 1990s, not from any principled rush to adopt green energy policies since the beginning of the millennium.
And funnily enough, even the Hungarian Competition Office (GVH) would appear to agree. Googling around for this piece, I came upon a press release from last January entitled “Not everything green is what it claims to be”
You can say that again, GVH!
I took some of the above post from an opinion piece I did for the BBJ in 2020. The full piece is here:
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