Gergely Karácsony presents most urgent actions of new 99 Movement programme
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony on Saturday presented 18 points of his 99 Movement programme.
Karácsony, the prime ministerial candidate of the Párbeszéd, Socialist and LMP parties, said the first programme points contained measures that could be started immediately and implemented “relatively swiftly … to provide compensation for the past ten years”.
The programme would scrap the section of the Labour Code that provides for the possibility of 400 hours of overtime, known among the opposition and critics as the “slave law”, Karácsony said. They would also “write a new Labour Code together,” he said.
Regarding education, Karácsony called the lowering of the age limit of mandatory education from 18 to 16 years a “sin”, and said his government would create targeted programmes “for the youth pushed out of education”.
The autonomy of Hungarian tertiary education would be re-established and the new government “would do everything in its power to bring the Central European University back,” he said.
Local authorities would be reinstated as the oversight body of state-owned schools and the disparities between the funding of state-owned and church-owned schools will be remedied by raising the support for the former, he said.
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The Fidesz government’s decisions stripping some religious organisations of their church status will be reviewed, he said.
“The crimes against Hungary’s rural areas will have to be remedied” and land privatisation laws reviewed, he said.
Of the “many things that should be remedied in the pension system”, Karácsony said his movement saw the plight of those receiving disability pensions as a priority.
Regarding steps to address the problems of the past year, Karácsony said they would fund the restart of SMEs which saw a substantial fall in revenues during the coronavirus epidemic. He also proposed that SMEs which suffered revenue losses above 50 percent should be exempt from paying social contributions.
Jobseekers’ allowances should be extended to nine months, Karácsony said.
Those who only received such an allowance for three months under the current legislation should be compensated, as well as those forced into taking sick leaves during the pandemic, he said.
Health-care and social workers would get a one-off wage subsidy of 500,000 forints (EUR 1,440) as a show of gratitude for their work during the pandemic, he said.
Karácsony said the Fidesz government had “punched an enormous hole” into local authorities’ operations by redirecting business tax and vehicle tax revenues during the state of emergency.
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Local councils could tax fortunes larger than 500,000,000 forints to recoup the resources, he proposed.
While many companies are fighting for survival after the pandemic, others have “grown amazingly” during the past years, Karácsony said.
The new government would introduce a “Mészáros tax” to exact contributions from those who have gained extra profits during the pandemic, he said.
Commenting on Karácsony’s presser, Fidesz communications director István Hollik said the programme contained “nothing new in comparison with the leftist programme dictated by Democratic Coalition leader Ferenc Gyurcsány.”
Karácsony and Gyurcsány “would bring back a politics of the past to which Hungarians have once rejected emphatically, because the left’s and Gyurcsány’s politics has already pushed Hungary to the brink of bankruptcy once,” he said.
Leftist programmes show that “Gyurcsány and the others” want to raise taxes, dismantle home creation programmes, scrap the reduction of utility fees and “to reinstate paid health care”, Hollik insisted.
Source: MTI
Like all socialists, Karacsony is ready to spend money that will only add to the deficit. Socialism is deadly. Hungarians should remember the previous socialist government, prior to Mr. Orban’s. The deficit outstripped the GDP. There have never been a socialist government that helped Hungary. Karacsony will open the border to illegal aliens, prices and unemployment will rise. Women will be most affected by Muslim youth raping anyone in skirts like in Germany. Terror will reign supreme with idiots trying to behead people.
Hungary must never have another detrimental socialist government.
There has never been a country where socialists have made people weathier! Compare the old East and West German states
There has never been a country where socialists have allowed people to be free. Compare the freedoms in North and South Korea.
There has never been a country where socialists have not started mass murder of their own citizens. 200 million people murdered by their own Govts between 1900 and 1999. USSR, China, etc
Just saying!
Communism/Socialism, no matter what the name never benefits anyone except the very top leaders. Correct me if I am wrong but didn’t Hungary and most if not all of the former Iron Curtain countries topple their communist governments in the early 90s? Nothing has changed to think that these Marxist and they are Marxist no matter what they brand themselves as will be any different than the last time they were in power. No government is ever perfect no matter what the brand of the party is because all politicians are a bunch of self serving rodents. That being said as far as Hungarian governments go Orban and Fidesz are good leaders and have the Hungarian nation headed in the right way for the people of Hungary.