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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