Auctions cannot prevent foreign ownership of farmland, say Socialists

Budapest, October 26 (MTI) – The government’s auctioning off state-owned farmland will not prevent foreign nationals from obtaining estates in Hungary, the Socialist Party said on Monday.

On the contrary, foreigners could not buy land if all those plots remained publicly owned, Socialist deputy chair Zoltan Gogos told a press conference.

He argued that Hungarians now buying farmland could sell their property after a moratorium of twenty years, when they could end up with foreign owners, and added that the government’s land sale programme was the “greatest swindle of the past 25 years”.

Gabor Harangozo, Socialist deputy head of Parliament’s agricultural committee, insisted that the plots to be auctioned were already on lease, and the leaseholders, who had obtained those leases in “crooked” ways, would have options to obtain them easily.

Earlier in the month, government office head Janos Lazar said that the government programme was aimed at preventing foreign nationals from acquiring farmland in the country. He insisted that it was important to ensure that Hungarian farmers have the opportunity to buy state-owned land.

Source: Auctions cannot prevent foreign ownership of farmland, say Socialists