Government destroys public ads with a declaration

A government declaration was published on Friday in Magyar Közlöny concerning advertising space, which determines the process of last years’ law of settlement structure protection’s execution, as Index spotted.

The declaration signed by Viktor Orbán claims that in 30 days, new advertisements can only be placed with the permission of the municipalities, and only those advertisement spaces can remain after 2021 that satisfy the new government regulation.

• For example, they cannot be larger than 9 square meters; the advertising space can have holders maximum 11 square meters large (currently a typical billboard is 12 square meters with holders of 14 square meters).
• Posters cannot be sticked anywhere else but public education advertising columns. (For example museums and theatres can place such pillars).
• Only street furniture can be used to publish advertisements in public spaces.

The government practically alters and modifies an entire market branch, and the participants of the market don’t know how to deal with it. Alfa Plakát Ltd.’s owner and manager Péter Szigeti was informed about this declaration when Index called him, but he added: there were gossips about it for weeks.

“We still think that there should be no such harsh interventions in this field, and we will try our best to oppose the execution of this law,” Szigeti told Index.

The problem with the law and its declaration is not that it makes the avoidance from new public advertisement spaces difficult, as only a few new advertisement spaces were established. “The problem is that it changes the entire billboard market and executes a declaration that allows only the companies of ‘buddies’ to advertise in public spaces,” the manager said.

According the attachments of the declaration, only municipal and state owned spaces will be available for advertisement (with the permission of the owner), and hardly any private places or buildings will be permitted the same. However, the current billboard market is structured in a way that out of the 30,000 billboards, 90 percent is located in private territories and 10 percent in municipal places. The law will alter the ratio, so in a couple of years, only the companies can advertise in public spaces which the government allows.