Budapest district considers setting up a company to run historic coffee shops in the Castle District

The municipality of Budapest’s 1st District is mulling setting up a company to run the historic Ruszwurm coffee shop and its stablemates in the Castle District, the district’s mayor, Lászlo Böröcz (Fidesz), said on Monday.

The goal is to keep the beloved coffee houses operational, despite a HUF 300 million (EUR 751,000) debt owed to the local authority by the current owner, Böröcz said. In the 2010s, the municipality terminated the owners’ contract as they could not agree on the lease, and the coffee shops have been operating without permits since, he noted.

The lawsuit ended with a top court ruling that Ruszwurm owed HUF 300 million (EUR 747 thousand) to the municipality, and the premises should be vacated, Böröcz said. The owner, Miklós Szamos, said in 2023 that he had been “asked to pay protection money”, Böröcz said. “That statement is hard to prove now”, Böröcz said, adding however that once the relationship between Márta V. Naszályi, who was the district’s (opposition-delegated) mayor at the time, and Szamos had soured, the district leadership “had an interest in closing those coffee shops”.

Since the municipality has no hope of recovering the money owed, it has offered to take over the running of the coffee houses and their 40-50 employees and equipment once the court decision has been executed, which is scheduled in the coming week, he said. Böröcz said that once the legal and material requirements were at hand, he would submit a proposal to the councillors in early November, and the coffee houses could open as early as December.

Read also:

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