Public outrage follows President Sulyok’s incredibly high Paris hotel cost
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The hotel reservation for the presidential delegation that attended the 2024 summer Olympic Games in Paris had been made during the tenure of Hungary’s previous president and “could neither be cancelled nor modified under reasonable terms”, the communications department of the incumbent president said in connection with an article published by an online portal on Saturday. The Democratic Coalition submitted a FOI request to get and be able to read the relevant contract and learn the person’s name, who gave go-ahead to sign it.
Hungarian President portrayed in “false light”?
The communications department of the president’s office said in a statement that it had requested a correction from the editor-in-chief of news portal 444.hu to an article published by the website yesterday morning, which, it said, “portrayed the president in a false light”.
The letter said the headline and text of the article published in the crime section falsely suggested that “Tamás Sulyok spent just three days in Paris despite his accommodation having being paid for the full duration of the Games”, the statement said, adding that in the article’s body “the facts serving as the basis for the article were falsely alluded to” (the article is now in the “Money” section – DNH).
They said that contrary to the article’s claims, the hotel reservation for the Paris Olympics had been made in mid-2023 for Sulyok’s predecessor, Katalin Novák, and her delegation. They said neither the location of the accommodation, the size of the delegation, the number of rooms booked nor the duration of the stay had been decided by Sulyok, noting he was still the head of the Constitutional Court at the time.
Contract could not be modified under reasonable terms
After Novák’s resignation on 10 February, Sulyok took his oath of office on 10 March and participated as Hungary’s representative at the Paris Games, though with a smaller delegation and for a shorter period of time, the statement said.
