Will Budapest approve a budget for 2025? Assembly divided, accusations of chaos and mismanagement

A Democratic Coalition (DK) member of the Budapest city assembly has said his party will vote to approve the capital’s 2025 budget, adding that whoever failed to green-light the city’s financing would back “Fidesz’s interest in sowing chaos”.

Without next year’s budget, Budapest’s public services, its transport system and theatres would cease to function, while the city’s 27,000 employees would not get a wage rise from Jan 1, Sándor Szaniszló, the leader of DK’s group in the assembly, told a press conference before the Budapest plenary on Wednesday, noting that an agreement between the trade unions and the capital on wages has been reached.

The meeting of the Budapest Assembly on 18 December. Photo: MTI/Kocsis Zoltán

Meanwhile, DK will vote to reject the central government’s plan to recategorise Budapest’s four big railway stations to the benefit of “a circle of friends” of the national ruling Fidesz party, which he called a “real estate scam”. Instead, 89 hectares of the land surrounding the stations should be set aside to build affordable rental apartments for young people, while the rest should be devoted to creating green spaces, he added.

Opposition Tisza Party representatives also expressed support for the budget on condition that the assembly adopted an amendment proposal by the party. The group said it disagreed with “several points” of the budget, but added that they were “aware of the historic responsibility” attached to its passage, if their amendment “aimed at facilitating an early review of the budget” were also passed.

According to Tisza, ruling Fidesz and the government were about to “betray” Budapest “and all Hungarians”, while Fidesz group leader Alexandra Szentkiralyi and Prime Minister Viktor Orban were “preparing to steal tens of billions of forints from the people of Budapest; they want to steal our railway stations and airport.” In its statement, Tisza accused the government of “systematically making the life of two million people in Budapest impossible for years”.

The government’s insistence that Budapest pay the full solidarity tax to the central budget in 2025 would leave no money in the city’s coffers to finance city services, it added. “If the city gave in to the blackmail of Viktor Orban and Alexandra Szentkiralyi, public transport would come to a halt, theatres would shut down, and welfare institutions and municipal companies would not be able to pay their staff,” the statement said.

Szentkirályi: Budapest assembly planning to adopt ‘unlawful bankruptcy budget’

Budapest city assembly “is planning to cap the year with an unlawful bankruptcy budget”, Alexandra Szentkirályi, the leader of the Fidesz-Christian-Democrat group, said in the assembly on Wednesday.

Referring to her previous tenure as a deputy mayor of Budapest, Szentkirályi said in her speech before the commencement of the assembly’s business that she had been confronted by how little anything had changed for the better in the past five years. At that point the city was “developing, much cleaner and far more orderly”, she insisted, and the capital had reserves of more than 200 billion forints. Now, the city continues to lack deputy mayors and “operates unlawfully”, she added.

“And now, if I’m not mistaken and I’m interpreting how things are going correctly, [assembly members] want to cap the year with an unlawful bankruptcy budget,” she said. Szentkirályi said Budapest should be allowed to function properly and lawfully. Fidesz, she added, was “working to solve the housing crisis”.

She noted Fidesz lobbying for a “student city” and a Healthy Budapest Programme, and she mentioned numerous developments thanks to the central government. Referring to the left-liberal majority in Budapest, she said the city’s leadership had presided over a financing curve that had started with 200 billion forints in reserves and sunk to a budget shortfall of 50 billion.

She appealed to members of the assembly to consider what was more important, “politics, deals, pacts, future elections, or managing Budapest residents’ lives and affairs smoothly. For us it’s certainly the latter.”

Read also:

• Government Office takes Budapest Municipality to court over alleged unlawful operation
• Karácsony: New budget ensures Budapest pays no more than it receives