Hungarian opposition pledges continued family assistance, utility fee cuts – UPDATE

Maintaining the current family assistance system and the utility fee cut scheme with changes to make those systems more equitable, as well as a rental home construction programme were among pledges representatives of the opposition Jobbik, Socialist, and LMP parties made ahead of the April elections, at an online press conference on Monday.

Jobbik deputy leader Dániel Z. Kárpát said that the allied opposition parties were preparing a detailed programme to ensure accommodation to some 30,000 young people in the next few years.

The opposition would “retain, extend, and make fairer” the family assistance measures currently in place, if they won the election,

he said, adding that they would also reintroduce a government-assisted savings programme for first home buyers as well as earlier housing subsidies. He insisted that several thousand housing units a year could be created through state construction, enlarging student hostels and utilising abandoned properties.

LMP’s Bernadett Bakos said that

the family assistance programme would be modified to make it “socially more equitable”, similarly to the utitility fee cut scheme.

Concerning the latter, she said that the utilities could be most effectively cut through modernising heating and insulation systems. She also urged new rules to “equally protect owners and tenants alike”.

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UPDATE

Fidesz blasts opposition ‘attacks’ on govt’s anti-inflation measures

Ruling Fidesz on Monday hit back at what it called “hypocritical attacks” by Hungary’s left-wing opposition on the government’s anti-inflation measures, saying the left had “nearly bankrupted” the country when it was in power.

The government’s scheme of utility bill cuts and decisions to freeze the rates on retail mortgage loans and cap the prices of seven basic food products are all aimed at shielding the Hungarian people from the negative effects of inflation, István Hollik, the party’s communications director, said in a video message.

“But not only has the left refused to support these measures, they’re also attacking them,” he said.

Hollik said the opposition’s call for VAT on basic foods to be cut to 5 percent was “hypocritical”, arguing that it had already been implemented, even though the left had refused to vote for the measure in parliament.

“The left never helped the people when it was in power, and even imposed more burdens on them by failing to protect them from energy price increases, scrapping the 13-month pension, cutting the wages of teachers and health-care workers and cutting family support,” he said.

Source: MTI