Commissioner owning the territory talks about cancelling Sziget Festival

Szilárd Demeter is the leader of the Petőfi Cultural Agency, an organisation owning the Southern parts of the Óbuda island, the venue of the world-known Budapest Sziget Festival. Now he said when he would shut down the event.

Mr Demeter is a government commissioner and was interviewed by ATV and Index. During the talk, he cleared when they would support the event. He mentioned two prerequisites. First, it should remain a pop-cultural mass event instead of a festival. Secondly, it should remain affordable for Hungarians, Világgazdaság wrote. Both are subjective prerequsites.

He said that the event should never become a meeting point of drunk foreign tourists and bachelor/hen party partakers, who leave their vomit and go. If that happens, Sziget will become worthless regardless of the GDP it generates.

He told Világgazdaság that his agency could cease the Sziget if they wanted. That is because they received the Southern part of the Óbuda island from the government, where the VIP camping and the festival’s financial centre are based. Mr Demeter complained before that it is problematic there is no longer a Hungarian share in the company behind the festival.

He highlighted he would only sign annual contracts with the organisers because “the future is unpredictable”. He added that the 3rd district and the Hungarian National Asset Management Inc. signed similar contracts. Budapest did not follow that pattern, but predicted the capital’s leadership would have conflicts with the festival’s organisers because of some very strict preconditions they built into the agreement.

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4 Comments

Cigány ország says:

08/04/2023 at 09:20

They just try to blackmail as much money as possible from the organizers. The thing is that Hungarians are trying to blackmail such enormous amounts that a lot of times they are left with nothing…that’s because they are big pigs and big pigs are slaughtered.
ostanus says:

08/04/2023 at 20:28

Maybe Sziget Festival could move to a neighboring country instead of agreeing with Hungarian government related organization´s extortion. Petőfi Cultural Agency could then organize a Hungarian folk music and dance festival replacing the blasphemous western style festival. There is an Island in Vienna, maybe the event could be hosted there until (hopefully) atmosphere changes in Hungary. Probably many other European cities would gladly welcome the festival.

Seriously speaking – Sziget Festival is such a positive international brand for Hungary and Budapest. I have great memories from Sziget Festival – a long time ago though. I hope it stays and continues in Budapest as an event with freedom of expression and multicultural art and amazing music. Hopefully conservative politicians won´t destroy it.
Peti says:

09/04/2023 at 12:14

Just reading some of the comments, it’s seems theres too many boneheads present. They aren’t even talking about a share of the profits, re. Your comments about Hungarians being greedy for money, they talk about it becoming a money greedy event for the foreign investors/ organizers. What they want is that it is affordable for the local population to attend and not just a bunch of wild drunken fools and an opportunity for foreigners to profit I.e. young Dutch boys selling drugs etc.
ostanus says:

10/04/2023 at 23:20

Anyone who organizes Sziget would set the prices as high as they can. It’s called free market economy. Only a bonehead would set the prices too high and go bankruptcy, or set a price cap that leads into a black market system and other issues.
But is Hungary a free market economy? Or is everything, even festival ticket prices going towards a centrally controlled system.

As far as I know, its a free country for anyone to organize an affordable festival for locals. No need to threat a succesfull festival, just organize one of your own with the prices you think are suitable.

And Hungarians sell drugs too.