Mayor Karácsony: Life expectancy at stake on the 2024 municipal election in Budapest this June

Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony, who heads the list of the Párbeszéd, Democratic Coalition and Socialist parties in the Budapest municipal election, said on Saturday that he will aim to extend residents’ life expectancy by five years during his next term if re-elected.

Karácsony noted that average life expectancy in Budapest is shorter by five years than in major European cities and said this encouraged him that “everything we do — whether it’s about city transport, housing or culture — should serve to make life better in the capital”.

“Let us set politics back on its feet so that it will be about our lives,” he said. “Let Budapest be a prosperous, resilient city; let it be our little republic; let it be our shared home, a city where it’s better to live and where we can live longer, at least by five years,” Karácsony said.

The mayor said Hungary had the highest ratio of deaths from preventable causes among European Union member states, which would not change without a fundamental reform of the state health sector, but there was a lot that a municipality could do about the matter. He said the city would continue its outpatient care programme in which around 14,000 free CT and MRI scans have been conducted in the capital since November 2020.

Big municipal housing programme on the horizon