Viktor Orban is the conservative Lodestar. Now he wants to determine the price of the eggs.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban took the lead in proposing many themes cherished by American conservatives, opposing “immigrant insanity”, “wake up the virus” and “gender madness” for many years.

Now, Mr. Oban is working to get rid of the Orthodox conservative view that the country should stay away from the economy. He tried to set the price of eggs and other items.

Orban was unable to curb Hungary's inflation last week, the highest in the EU and faced a surge in support of political rivals, ordering price controls for 30 basic foods. He accused supermarkets of price fraud, especially on eggs and butter.

Mr Orban said the Hungarian government will start forcing supermarkets this week to force supermarkets to make sure they charge for basic foods don't exceed 10% of the wholesale price. He said the current markup on eggs is “unacceptable” 40%.

Mr. Alban Thunder told grocery inflation: “The price will not rise, they are raised.” Hungary, the largest of which are foreign companies such as Tesco in the UK and Spar in Austria.

Hungary has been called by many American conservatives (and President Trump) the beacon of how to run a country. However, Mr. Orban's move highlights how he worked hard to manage the most concern of many Hungarians: the economic distress of their country.

Economic troubles weakened Mr. Alban at home and abroad. The Hungarian Institute of Economics, an independent institution, recently reported that its business confidence index “slid to a 50-month low.”

These troubles have severely curbed Mr. Oban's popularity ahead of next year's election, and according to some opinion polls, his management of Fides' party could lose to a upstart opposition campaign led by former party loyalist Peter Magyar.

Mr. Magyar quickly rose to the nation’s reputation as the leader of a massive movement based on Mr. Hungary’s condemnation of Hungary’s “hazardous cost crisis”, its staggering public services and an economic competition venue that tends toward businesses controlled by the Prime Minister’s relatives and political allies.

In Budapest on Saturday, Mr. Magel attracted thousands of anti-government protesters to rally commemorating Hungary’s defeated 1848 revolution, far exceeding a similar event held by Mr. Orban earlier in the day.

Mr. Magyar mocked the Minister of Economy Marton Nagy for trying to see the price that can lower the price by “circling the numbers with a ballpoint pen”, while Mr. Orban, his family and friends “stole your money” and tried to decide the price of the Hungarian staple sour cream. The crowd roared.

Retired Erika Lapos traveled more than 100 miles with her husband at her home in northeast Hungary to attend a rally by Mr. Magayar, which blamed corruption on a weak economy. “It's not just a scandal, but a crime,” she said.

Mr. Orban was only recently successful in blaming the war in Ukraine for criticizing his economic record and corruption. He also tried to focus public attention on issues such as illegal immigration and his false allegations that the EU tried to transform Hungarian children into transsexual or homosexual.

Agoston Mraz, director of the Nissabon Institute, said Ukraine’s war and immigration no longer occupy the attention of voters.

“The inflation problem is by far the most important thing,” he said.

Still, he is eager to change the theme and improve Mr Orban's conservative base, whose supporters in Parliament Tuesday revised public parliamentary laws to ban gay pride parades, a series of efforts targeting the country's LGBTQ community.

But there is no escape from economic reality.

Overall, Hungary’s food prices are 7.1% higher than the same period last year, meaning food is now more than 80% higher than it was five years ago, according to official data released last week.

Mr Max said that according to his institute's polls, Fidds still has a solid lead over Mr Magyar's Tissa party, but is vulnerable to the economy.

Economic hardship also undermines Hungary's long-term struggle with EU sanctions on Russia – Mr Orban hopes they are removed – and many other issues related to the rule of law, democracy and corruption.

Hungary’s cash isn’t enough to fill the big hole in its budget, and despite their political ties, there is no real opportunity to get financial aid from Mr. Trump and increasingly demand money from the EU, which has frozen over $20 billion in more than $20 billion.

In a blunt warning to Mr Orban, Orban continued to infringe on European leaders, the EU's administration fell on the table on December 31, about 1 billion euros, or about $1.1 billion, and said the time limit had expired.

On Friday, after weeks of attacks, Mr Orban was the “empire” of the “Warmer” whose country would never bow, Hungary quietly boasted about its veto and agreed to allow European sanctions imposed on more than 2,400 Russian individuals and entities.

Zoltan Pogatsa, an economics professor at the Western Hungarian University, said Mr. Oban told Brussels that his nationalist political foundation was good but “can’t help but pay the bill.”

Before the European Union freezes most of the funds, he added: “In what Mr Orban calls the golden year, funding from Brussels drives most of the growth”, a period of high growth and relatively stable prices in the first decade before the common pandemic.

After the recession last year, Hungary's economy grew again, albeit at a very slow pace. But investment is the main driver of future growth and has plummeted, Pogasa said. Loopholes in the budget – last month criticizing the EU was a gap in “over-deficit situation” – If, like the last general election in 2022, Mr Orban provides handouts to voters by next year.

Mr Orban announced what he called the “biggest tax cut in Europe” last month, promising that mothers of two or more children would be exempted from income tax and to allow pensioners to rebate VAT they pay on food.

Hungary is the highest tax in the EU of 27% taxes, and many economists say the easiest way to lower food prices is to reduce food, which is also a special tax on retailers.

However, doing so will increase the budget deficit when neither the EU nor the US provides cash.

Rating agency Standard & Poor's said in November that it had lowered its perception of Hungary to a negative level, mainly because it “could end up losing a lot of European Union funds.”

“No matter how much anti-EU rhetoric he used, Auban realized he still had to squeeze some juice out of Brussels,” said former Finance Minister Lajos Bokros.

He said Mr. Auban fully sees inflation and other issues through a political perspective. He said: “His government created inflation with its loose spending, but lies to voters are imported from the outside.

Orban quickly released official data, indicating that Hungary's year-on-year inflation rose to 5.6% in February.

“We will end excessive and unreasonable price increases,” he said. He did not explain how to do this, but the Hungarian state statistics office said on Wednesday that Mr. Oban's intervention had been reduced by nearly 20%.

Geza Sebestyen, head of the Economic Policy Center at the University of Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a member of the Conservative government, said Mr Orban is unlikely to send inspectors to punish shop owners who have not yet lowered their prices. “Socialism obviously doesn't work, and Eastern Europe knows it's better than anyone else,” he said.

But Peter Bod, former governor of the Hungarian Central Bank, was worried that Mr. Orban would reach out to the tools of the communist era on what would have been a tool of a free market.

“Not Gulash communism,” he said, referring to the country's rework of the traits of Soviet socialism in the 1960s and 1970s, “we got Gulash capitalism.”

Barnabas Heincz contributed the report.