LMP

Opposition: govt change crucial for fighting climate change

Hungary opposition
If Hungary is to have a fighting chance of countering climate change, voters must elect a new government in the April 3 general election, politicians of the united opposition said on Wednesday.
 
Otherwise, Hungary will be left defenceless against the climate crisis, independent lawmaker Bernadett Szél told a joint press conference, adding that the Fidesz-led government in recent years had carried out over 3,000 investment projects which had ignored green considerations.
 
Hungary, she said, was
 
far too dependent on Russian gas imports,
 
while the insulation systems of buildings remained underdeveloped. A new government would insulate 150,000 flats a year and launch social, political and professional debates on the use of nuclear energy, she said, adding that the opposition saw the expansion of Hungary’s Paks nuclear power plant as a “corruption project”.
 
Fully 35 percent of Hungary’s energy mix should be sourced from renewable energy by 2030,
 
she said.
 
Erzsébet Schmuck, co-leader of LMP, accused Fidesz of gutting Hungary’s environmental protection authorities so that they could be free to “destroy” the country’s green spaces. “What we’ve been seeing over the past years is that the prime minister vetoed the EU’s stricter climate goals while misleading Hungarian society,” Schmuck said. A new government, she said, would include an independent ministry dealing with environmental protection and climate change.
 
 
Parbeszed’s Bence Tordai said
 
Hungary needed cities and districts where all key services were accessible on foot or by bicycle within 15 minutes.
 
Under a new government, public transport passes would be incorporated into Hungary’s “cafeteria” voucher system, he said, arguing that public and non-motorised transport must become a true alternative to cars. Also, special support would be given to electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles, he said, adding that rail lines would be electrified wherever possible and cycling infrastructure improved.
Rosatom-Russia Orbán
Read alsoPM Orbán: nuclear energy is cheap and climate-friendly

Green party: only a government change can save Lake Fertő

Lake Fertő Hungary
Only a new government formed by the opposition parties could guarantee that Hungary’s protected areas including Lake Fertő can be saved, a lawmaker of green LMP said on Thursday.
 
Authorities have recently issued construction permits for “a gigantic property investment” planned on the lakeshore which would cover a much larger area than planned before, Péter Ungár told an online press conference.
 
“There is nothing against the development of the lake region, but what it is about here is that interest groups linked to [ruling] Fidesz want to transform the area and not arrange for its proper protection,” Ungár said.

Should the opposition parties come to power in the spring, they will make sure to maintain Hungary’s protected areas,
 
he said.
 
 
LMP earlier criticised government plans for touristic investments affecting the lakeshore, including a hotel, a yacht club and a sports centre. UNESCO, ICOMOS, the EU’s environmental agency and several Hungarian and international green NGOs have sharply criticised the project.
Read alsoHungary’s most unique national park is 30 years old – PHOTOS, VIDEOS

Green party: government lobbying for nuclear energy

Power Plant Nuclear Energy
The opposition LMP party is calling on the government and MEPs to reject the European Commission’s draft taxonomy system in connection with the future use of natural gas and nuclear energy, Erzsébet Schmuck, the co-leader of the party, said on Wednesday.
 
Under the classification system which establishes a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities, natural gas investments carried out before 2030 with CO2 emissions below a certain threshold and nuclear energy projects licenced before 2045 would be classified as sustainable, Schmuck told an online press conference.
 
The taxonomy, if accepted, would stand in the way of fulfilling the EU’s climate goals, including conversion to renewable energy, Schmuck said.
 
 
Natural gas and nuclear energy cannot be considered sustainable technologies,
 
she said.
 
Schmuck criticised the Orbán government for “participating heavily” in the European nuclear lobbying to get Brussels to drafting the taxonomy, saying that the Hungarian prime minister “wants to greenwash natural gas and nuclear energy”.
Rosatom-Russia Orbán
Read alsoPM Orbán: nuclear energy is cheap and climate-friendly

This is how the opposition wants to defeat Orbán

Hungary opposition press conference
Representatives of parliamentary opposition parties have called on the public to support a referendum initiative which they say would be “a step towards changing the government”.
 
Péter Márki-Zay, prime ministerial candidate of the united opposition, called on voters to support the referendum “to stem corruption and poverty”. One of the referendum’s two questions aims to provide affordable housing for students as opposed to plans to construct a campus of Fudan University at the site. The other question is about the opposition’s initiative to extend the period of unemployment benefits from three months to nine, which he said was the shortest in the European Union.
 
The referendum, he insisted, had a “larger significance” and would help the opposition win
 
“a majority which could release Hungary from the most corrupt government in its history”.
 
Gergely Karácsony, mayor of Budapest and co-leader of the Párbeszéd party, said that so far the united opposition has gathered almost 100,000 signatures in support of the proposed referendum.
 
 
Hungary, he said, needed “a government which serves the people” rather than “rulers who lord it over them”, adding that the six opposition parties had formed an alliance to make that happen.
 
Democratic Coalition MEP Klára Dobrev said
 
“each signature is as much contribution as a vote”
 
to replacing the government and building a “freer, more democratic Hungary”.

Momentum leader Anna Donáth said a longer period of unemployment benefits would help to remedy Hungary’s “existential problems”. Co-leader of the Socialist Party Ágnes Kunhalmi called on citizens to back plans to build a “student city” instead of creating a campus for China’s Fudan University.
 
 
LMP co-leader Mate Kanasz-Nagy said that the referendum was motivated by a desire to create greater social security. Conservative Jobbik deputy leader Dániel Z. Kárpát said that an opposition government would “steer the country towards western prosperity rather than in the direction of Eastern dictatorships”. He insisted that the
 
ruling Fidesz party was “pseudo-patriotic” and “betrayed Hungary’s young people”.
 
A government run by the current opposition, he added, would offer a rental subsidies, student hostels, and “opportunities to prosper in the homeland”.
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Read alsoOpposition pledges to cut incredibly long healthcare waiting lists

Green opposition advocates referendum as ‘2nd step’ to change government

A referendum proposed by the opposition could be a second step towards changing the government following last year’s preselection of opposition candidates for prime minister, LMP deputy group leader Antal Csárdi told an online press conference on Tuesday.

The planned referendum is aimed at increasing the unemployment benefit from three months to nine, as well as thwarting plans to build a “Chinese elite university” in Budapest, Csárdi said.

The politician argued that

Hungary’s term of providing unemployment benefits was the shortest in Europe,

and demanded that job seekers should get “a decent amount of time” to find employment. He also insisted that the Fudan University project would obliterate earlier plans to build a hostel complex for some 10,000 students.

völner pál
Read alsoOpposition called on Justice Minister Judit Varga to resign – update

Opposition would set up ‘green ministry’

Hungary LMP green party
The opposition LMP party on Wednesday pledged to set up a “green ministry” and to stop environmental destruction should the party come to power at the general election in the spring.
 
Reviewing the events of 2021, party co-leader Erzsébet Schmuck slammed the government for “a long list of measures endangering this generation’s lives and livelihood” as well as the liveable environment in the future. Environmental destruction also causes serious economic damage and increases poverty, she told an online press briefing.
 
Schmuck insisted that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “feels the pressure over the cabinet’s policies that speed up climate change …
 
and is attempting to greenwash those measures.”
 
Hungary continued to veto European Union climate goals in 2021, and the government failed to take steps to curb emissions, adapt to climate change or protect green areas, she said. “While the prime minister goes on about taxing large polluters in the EU, he signs strategic cooperation agreements with large corporations at home,” she said.
 
 
After car manufacturing, the
 
government is subsidising battery manufacturing, another “high polluting industry”,
 
she said. Meanwhile, Orbán “insists on expensive and dangerous” nuclear energy, she said.
 
Meanwhile MTI reported that the share of renewables in Hungary’s gross final energy consumption rose by 1.3 of a percentage point to 13.9 percent last year, an annual report released by the Hungarian Energy and Public Utility Regulatory Authority (MEKH) shows.
 
Also the share of energy from renewable sources in transport increased by 3.5 percentage points to 11.6 percent.
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Read also6 places to visit in Hungary in winter – PHOTOS, VIDEOS

Opposition: Orbán’s economic and social policies have failed

orbán

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s economic and social policies have failed, the co-leader of opposition LMP said on Monday at a joint press conference held online with two other politicians presenting the opposition’s social programme.

Máté Kanász-Nagy, introducing himself as spokesman on social affairs in the shadow government of prime ministerial candidate Péter Márki-Zay, said that inflation was sky-rocketing, social inequalities were “set loose” and poverty was increasing.

If the opposition forms the next government, family allowances will be increased, a subsidised rental housing scheme launched and people caring for relatives living with disabilities no longer neglected, he said.

András Jámbor, a candidate of Párbeszéd and the opposition alliance for next year’s election, said that

Hungary had been suffering from a housing crisis for over a decade.

He said the government had cancelled the only large-scale accommodation project, dubbed Student City, and instead plans “to bring in a Chinese private university which will drive the country to indebtedness”. Citing surveys, he said that

home prices in Budapest had increased by 10 percent in a year.

Some 62 percent of people aged 18-34 live with their parents, Jámbor said. Despite having a full-time job, some 70 percent of Hungarians aged 25-34 and living with their parents cannot afford having their own home, he added.

Once a new government comes to power, he said, a new housing subsidy scheme will be launched, expanded options offered for employers to support accommodation and an advance savings scheme launched for home purchases.

The forced evacuation of tenants who cannot pay back their forex-denominated mortgages will be suspended for an unspecified period of time and a fund set up to compensate those that lost their homes, he said. The family insolvency service will be expanded and support for home maintenance and debt management reintroduced, he added.

Lajos Korozs of the Socialists said that local governments would be once again in charge of offering crisis aid. He promised that once in government, wages for social workers will be raised by 50 percent and the range of home services expanded.

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Read alsoOpposition PM candidate: Orbán organises migration, executes “Soros plan”

Opposition: the government took away university autonomy

Hungary Semmelweis University
If the united opposition wins next spring’s general election and forms Hungary’s next government, LMP as a member of it will press for restoring the autonomy of the country’s universities, the party’s group leader said on Wednesday.
 
“One of the vilest things the government has done this past year, if not during its entire term”, has been to restructure universities and “place them under political control”, László Lóránt Keresztes told an online press conference. He made reference to the “model changing” scheme under which over twenty Hungarian universities have shifted from being state-run to being operated by an asset management foundation.
 
“It is clear that the entire programme has been about anything but a model change,”
 
he said, insisting the structural transformation “was a lie” and resulted in “trampling on university autonomy”.

The group leader said it was not true that the replacement of the university managers served the objective of developing the country’s higher education system with a view to making it more competitive.
 
“It was also a lie that the universities have themselves asked for their conversion into a new structure as much as it was a lie by the government that they would respect the universities’ autonomy,”
 
Keresztes said.
 
 
Meanwhile, government party lawmakers decided in parliament to approve the construction of
 
“a campus of the Chinese Communist Party’s”
 
elite Fudan University in Budapest with several hundreds of billions of forints paid by Hungarian taxpayers, the group leader said. “This is a symbolic issue and this is why the opposition’s referendum initiative for repealing the relevant law is highly important,” he said.
Gergely Karácsony Budapest
Read alsoOpposition starts collecting signatures against the Chinese university

Government ‘boycotting’ probes into cases concerning national security?

Viktor-Orban-parliament
Opposition members of parliament’s national security committee have accused deputies of the ruling parties of “boycotting” the launch of an investigation into certain cases affecting national security.
 
At a press conference after the body’s meeting on Thursday, conservative Jobbik’s János Stummer, the head of the committee, said:
 
“It is impossible for opposition deputies to get professional and thorough answers to questions concerning, for example, the Pegasus spy software.”
 
The governing parties voted down a proposal under which the interior minister would have answered the opposition’s questions behind closed doors, he said.
 
Zsolt Molnár of the Socialist Party said the governing side’s actions were “a brutal attack on the remaining democratic institutions”, and he accused the ruling parties of “abusing” rather than applying the law.
 
 
Péter Ungár of the LMP party said that for ruling Fidesz,
 
the term ‘classified information’ was “not a legal category but a tool of political communications”.
 
He said the current opposition, if it assumed power after the next general election, would “restore the original status of state secrets”.

Ágnes Vadai of the Democratic Coalition urged an answer to the question of whether the justice minister had broken the law by permanently delegating the authority to permit secret data collection when the minister’s powers could only be transferred on a temporary basis. “The situation is made all the more serious by those powers ending up with somebody implicated in a case of major corruption,” she said.
 
Vadai said that the justice ministry “must not refuse to answer fundamental questions”, adding that “what has happened may require a joint session of several parliamentary committees”.
Opposition Hungary
Read also Hungarian opposition a national security threat?

Opposition: state practically being controlled by the Fidesz mafia!

Fidesz presidency board
Hungary’s opposition parties on Thursday called on Justice Minister Judit Varga to step down in the wake of bribery allegations against a former senior ministry official.
 
Pál Völner resigned as state secretary on Tuesday after the chief prosecutor’s office asked parliament to lift his immunity so he can defend himself against charges of receiving bribes on a regular basis. At an online press conference held in front of the justice ministry, the opposition Momentum, Párbeszéd, Jobbik, LMP, Democratic Coalition (DK) and Socialist parties, along with the Everyone’s Hungary Movement (MMM), called on Völner to also step down as a lawmaker.
 
Noting that Thursday marked International Anti-Corruption Day, Momentum board member Miklós Hajnal said “systemic corruption” in Hungary was “also visible from the inside, not just at the tip of the iceberg”.
 
“They are practically running a criminal organisation within the ministry, and the state is practically being controlled by the Fidesz mafia,” he insisted. Hajnal said the opposition would “cleanse” every ministry if it won next year’s general election and aimed to ensure that Hungary was “not the European champion of corruption”.
 
Párbeszéd’s Bence Tordai said two other MPs of ruling Fidesz, György Simonka and István Boldog,
 
faced “similar allegations to Völner”, but “their parliamentary seats are the key to maintaining Fidesz’s two-thirds majority”.
 
György Szilágyi of Jobbik said “the most shocking thing” was that Hungary “has become the most corrupt country in the European Union”.
 
LMP group leader László Lóránt Keresztes noted that
 
Völner is suspected of having received “millions of forints” in bribes from the president of the branch of bailiffs over a sustained period of time.
 
 
“Until the threads of corruption are investigated, the repossessions need to be suspended,” he said. Keresztes added that because Völner had also been in charge of approving surveillance requests, “we must assume that he also handled those in a corrupt manner.”
 
Socialist lawmaker Ildikó Borbély Bangó called for details of the case surrounding Völner to be declassified. She wanted to know whether Völner had
 
“provided services to certain individuals in other areas” and if the bribes in question had “also ended up in other places”.
 
DK’s László Varju said Volner’s asset declaration was not a reliable source of information in the investigation against him, arguing that he and his family “hid their illegally-acquired wealth in the business empire they own”.
 
MMM board member Katalin Lukácsi, who spoke on behalf of Péter Márki-Zay, the opposition alliance’s prime ministerial candidate, speculated that the justice minister and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had been aware of Völner’s actions. “In a happy country the justice ministry is the headquarters of honour, but in Hungary it’s just another subcontractor of the
 
crime syndicate led by Viktor Orbán,”
 
she said.
 
In response, the ruling Fidesz party said that while corruption among the ranks of the left wing had happened with impunity, Völner was prepared to clear his name in court. “The left wing should examine itself: [Momentum’s]
 
Katalin Cseh is up to the eyes in a corruption scandal, a mafia is operating at the Metropolitan Council,
 
and the cronies of [ex-premiers Ferenc] Gyurcsány and [Gordon] Bajnai are acquiring real properties in Budapest for bribes,” Fidesz said in a statement. While the left wing has shown no intention of investigating its cases, Völner is prepared to clear his name, and pro-government MPs will vote to lift his immunity to enable him to do so, Fidesz said.
Fidesz presidency board
Read also Opposition: state practically being controlled by the Fidesz mafia!

Opposition called on Justice Minister Judit Varga to resign – update

völner pál

As we wrote today, Pál Völner, the state secretary of the ministry of justice, has resigned after the chief prosecutor’s office asked parliament to lift his immunity so he can defend himself against charges of receiving bribes on a regular basis.

In response, at a joint press conference opposition politicians called on Justice Minister Judit Varga to resign.

Parbeszed deputy group leader Olivio Kocsis-Cake called the affair “the most serious corruption scandal of the government”, saying that it involved a state secretary who “had ordered the surveillance of persons”.

“Varga’s role should also be assessed because it was her who authorised the state secretary’s actions,” he said.

Socialist deputy group leader Tamás Harangozó said

the case demonstrated “how thoroughly corrupt [ruling] Fidesz’s regime” was.

Jobbik lawmaker Tibor Nunkovics called on Völner to resign from his mandate in parliament and DK lawmaker László Szakács described Volner “as a key player in the Pegasus affair”.

Momentum spokesman Márton Tompos and LMP group leader Lóránt László Keresztes said

Varga had to resign because she should take responsibility for what had happened in the ministry.

orbán is shadow
Read alsoHungary faces a vicious circle of corruption?

UPDATE

Ruling Fidesz responded as saying that the opposition left “showed no sign of being ready to clarify the corruption surrounding the sale of Budapest City Hall and other cases of corruption”. It said in a statement that Gergely Karácsony, the mayor of Budapest, “had been hiding away” for weeks from clearing the affair while “it has become clear that there is a mafia operating in the City Hall”.

The ruling parties will support lifting Völner’s parliamentary immunity because the state secretary “has to clear himself”, Fidesz said.

Karácsony said a screening committee had to be set up in order to assess the systemic problems in connection with the “often cruel and inhumane” execution of claims included in court decisions. Karácsony, who is also co-leader of Párbeszéd, said on Facebook that

the committee must also reveal if there were any political ties involved in the case and assess the reasons behind “the outstandingly large number of forced evictions under the Orbán government”.

LMP party: Govt should provide 80% wage subsidy for ppl who lost their job

Péter Ungár Opposition Party LMP Member

Hungary must prepare for the possibility of a prolonged economic slowdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, a lawmaker of opposition LMP said on Friday.

More and more western European countries are bringing back lockdowns, which will also affect the Hungarian economy, Péter Ungár told an online press conference, predicting that the country’s tourism sector would not recover until at least March next year.

He said the government was not doing enough to ease the effects of the crisis on certain sectors and was only looking at macroeconomic indicators.

Opposition party pledges annual €816 million for home insulation support

Minister: Hungary on the right path to food sovereignty and security

“But GDP growth is no consolation to someone who has had to close their restaurant,” Ungár argued.

He pointed out that the Austrian government had paid out 50 times as much wage support money as the Hungarian government.

He said the government should provide an 80 percent wage subsidy to those who had lost their jobs during the pandemic and extend the period of eligibility for unemployment benefits from three months to nine.

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Opposition party pledges annual €816 million for home insulation support

Home Insulation Development Energy

LMP will earmark an annual 300 billion forints (€ 816 million) to insulate residential buildings if it comes to power, the co-leader of the opposition party said at a press conference streamed on Facebook on Saturday.

Máté Kanász-Nagy said the measure would support the renovation of 150,000 homes a year. It would also create tens of thousands of jobs and serve to achieve economic, climate protection and health goals, he added.

Hungary is “in last place” in terms of insulating residential buildings, which is “an especially big problem in the time of runaway energy prices”, he said.

Government to maintain the central regulation of energy prices in Hungary

Hungary committed to building hydrogen economy, says technology ministry

Kanász-Nagy said comprehensive renovations of residential buildings could save 80-90 percent on energy costs, “ensuring reduced utilities fees for Hungarian families in the long term”, while cutting pollution.

Heating with wood is a major source of air pollution in Hungary, he said, adding that about 15,000 people die each year in the country as a result of air pollution.

Mátra Power Plant,
Read alsoHungary ready to live up to 2050 environmental commitments, says minister

Parliament not to ratify the Istanbul Convention

Hungarian-parliament
The opposition LMP party on Thursday submitted a proposal to parliament, calling for the ratification of the Istanbul Convention against violence against women.
 
LMP lawmaker Krisztina Hohn told an online press conference marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women that Hungary’s parliament had for years “failed to incorporate the convention into the Hungarian legal system, despite its important elements on prevention of domestic violence and victim protection.” More stringent punishments for such cases, as enshrined in criminal law, fail to meet their mark, as domestic violence often remains undisclosed, she said.
 
The lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic have exacerbated the problem, Hohn said, and
 
called on politicians to strengthen the social signalling systems, as well as on private citizens to come forward if they witness domestic violence.
 
 
 
The European Commission will put forward a draft directive on combatting violence against women early next year, based on the objectives of the Istanbul Convention, Helena Dalli, the EU commissioner for equality, said at the European Parliament’s plenary session on Thursday. The debate focused on women’s rights on the occasion of the International Day of Elimination of Violence Against Women designated by the United Nations in 2000.
 
Addressing the debate, Lívia Járóka, vice president of the European Parliament, said that while eliminating violence against women is a common goal, requiring from member states a mandatory application of the Istanbul Convention will be divisive as it contains ideologically driven elements that are unacceptable to conservative Christian communities.

Járóka, an MEP of ruling Fidesz, said in a press release that “Hungary ratified in May 2011 all the provisions of the Council of Europe’s convention on combating and
 
preventing violence against women and domestic violence that truly concern women and are for women”.
 
“Hungary is fighting for the elimination of violence! We believe in deeds, rather than in the ratification of documents,” she said.
lgbtq-fidesz
Read alsoFidesz: it is an absurd idea that people are not born as men or women!

Green opposition party accuses govt of secrecy on Paks nuclear power plant upgrade

Power Plant Nuclear Energy

Publicity, professionalism and security are the most important principles in the use of nuclear energy, yet the government has chosen secrecy, outsourcing and political control, the leader of the opposition LMP party’s parliamentary group said on Saturday.

Speaking at an online press conference, László Lóránt Keresztes said the government is unwilling to admit that it has made seriously wrong decisions and it is ready to take further ones.

In addition, “substantive information (.) has been classified in connection with the failure to secure a permission for the Paks II [upgrade] project,” he said.

They make wrong decisions such as licensing excavation work in the absence of key permissions, Keresztes said.

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Hungarian Atomic Energy Office independent from 2022?

The government has reached a dead end over the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel rods. The decisions made in the recent period are especially detrimental to the city of Pecs and Baranya County, he said.

If the government keeps hiding information, LMP will resort to legal means to finally inform the Hungarian public about the state of the Paks nuclear power plant expansion.

The opposition party is convinced that the project should not be negotiated in Moscow, behind closed doors, he added. LMP is of the view that the deeply flawed project should be stopped, Keresztes said.

József Kóbor, LMP’s municipal councillor of Pecs, said the disposal of radioactive waste is a huge problem throughout Europe.

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Read alsoNew Paks power plant blocks paid with Russian loan could start commercial operation in 2029

Opposition party calls on govt to adjust public servant wages

Péter Ungár LMP

Opposition LMP lawmaker Péter Ungár on Friday called on the government to adjust public servant wages.

Ungár told an online press conference that despite the planned increase in minimum wages for unskilled and skilled workers, some 94 percent of public servants will earn “an unchanged amount, which is the guaranteed minimum wage”, unless their wages are adjusted.

“The state is the worst employer, with the majority of public servants getting only the guaranteed minimum wage, regardless of how many decades they have been working in their profession and regardless of whether they finished higher education or not,” Ungár added.

Hungary wages grow 8.9 pc

“This is an absurd, unsustainable and unexplainable situation that can only be resolved if the government makes adjustments to public servant wages,” he said.

PM Orbán admires the success story of South Korea

LMP continues to urge the introduction of a minimum wage for degree holders because it is the only way to encourage employers to get further training, he added.

He also said that despite a 20 percent increase, many employees in social sectors still make tens of thousands of forints less than health-sector workers doing similar jobs.

Máté Kanász-Nagy
Read alsoGreen party calls on Budapest Mayor to intensify support for green policies

ChristDems, LMP mark Day of Szekler Autonomy

székely szekler flag parliament Budapest

Co-ruling Christian Democrats and opposition LMP marked the Day of Szekler Autonomy on Sunday.

Christian Democrats group leader Istvan Simicskó said it was a moral obligation for Hungarians living in the motherland to support ethnic Hungarians in diasporas everywhere in the world. Szeklers are a historical community whose unique traditions have enriched Hungarian culture for many centuries, he said.

“We support their demand for autonomy, the aspirations of a minority proud of its identity to be successful in their place of birth,”

Simicskó said.

“Autonomy is a right in the European Union which the Szeklers deserve and it is natural to demand it or even fight for it,” he added.

LMP group leader László Lóránt Keresztes said in a statement that guaranteeing the autonomy and rights of indigenous national minorities was an important European value “worth fighting for together”.

Day of Szekler Autonomy is marked on the last Sunday of every October on a 2016 initative by the Szekler National Council.

Prince Charles, Royal Family, England
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Green party calls on Budapest Mayor to intensify support for green policies

Máté Kanász-Nagy

The opposition LMP has called on Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony to intensify support for green policies and promote the vision of a more liveable city with a greater deal of dedication, a member of the party’s Budapest board said on Sunday.

Bernadett Bakos told a press conference on Facebook that more cycle lanes need to be built and a congestion charge introduced in order to drastically reduce car traffic.

LMP co-leader Máté Kanász-Nagy told the same press conference that during the past two years with Karácsony in office, some favourable changes have been effected but there were also many shortcomings.

Opposition Rep: LMP is assurance for representation of green issues in Hungary

Terrible! Air quality worsens across Hungary

Steps taken for a more liveable and sustainable city included building cycle lanes along central Budapest’s main avenues, he said. LMP also welcomes the city council’s plans to develop green areas, he added.

At the same time, he said LMP opposed the council’s plan to sell the plot of the former swimming pool of Újpest which he said should be used as a public park instead.

Bakos also criticised the city council for its failure to reduce noise pollution near the Ferihegy airport.

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