Gergely Karácsony, the mayor of Budapest and the vice-president of the Hungarian Association of Local Councils, warned on Friday that localities could miss out on funding because of the rule-of-law procedure the European Commission has launched against Hungary.
After a meeting of the organisation’s presidium in Budapest, Karácsony said local Budapest councils and the association would work tirelessly to ensure a deal between the European Commission and the government can be struck on ending the rule-of-law procedure.
Even though the commission’s “serious criticisms of Hungary are legitimate”,
local council leaders have an interest in ensuring that Hungary can gain access to EU resources,
Any deal between the commission and government must guarantee the stability of the local council system as well as cooperation between local councils and the central government based on partnership, he said.
Meanwhile, the association’s president, György Gémesi, the mayor of Gödöllő, complained about the
planned abolition of the local business tax
which he said would deprive local councils of a thousand billion forints, putting the maintenance of public services in direct jeopardy.
Some 1,600 people fleeing the fighting in Ukraine have arrived in the eastern Hungarian border town of Záhony over the last two days, the town’s mayor said on Friday.
László Helmeczi told MTI that because the majority of the arrivals have already been taken to other parts of the country to stay with relatives or acquaintances, the local council only had to provide placement for 80 people, mainly women and children. The refugees have been placed in the local cultural centre, he said, adding that they were sleeping on mattresses donated by the locals and have received blankets from the Hungarian Red Cross.
One refugee woman who fled with her children from Tysaashvan (Tiszaásvány) said people in and around Uzhhorod (Ungvár)
were “very afraid” after hearing reports of Russian forces preparing to bomb the local airport.
She added that her husband had stayed behind in Ukraine, but she and her children would seek help from relatives in Kaposvár, in south-western Hungary.
Helmeczi said many Hungarians had offered to take refugees to Budapest and some are prepared to drive families all the way to Kaposvár. Miklós Szendrei, the community coordinator of the Hungarian Reformed Church Aid, said many private individuals have signalled their intent to help, with someone even offering to place refugees in their six-bedroom flat in Nyiregyhaza, in the east.
He said that while Thursday’s arrivals were mostly from western Ukraine’s Transcarpathia region, more and more people were now coming from parts of Ukraine that are farther from the border.
Gergely Gulyás, the prime minister’s chief of staff, was asked today if there would be a prime ministerial debate ahead of the April 3 general election. He said it was “best to wait for the start of the official campaign period” when it came to dealing with the campaign. Thus, he did not exclude it.
Asked about recent comments by opposition prime ministerial candidate Péter Márki-Zay, Gulyás said the majority of his remarks “are in line with the positions held by the left over the past decades”. “That’s what it’s been easy for the Hungarian left wing to support him,” Gulyás added. He said a potential opposition coalition would also be tainted by anti-Semitism. Referring to conservative Jobbik, Gulyás said that though anti-Semitism was not “a continuation of the left’s past activities, they’re still allying themselves with those who, just a few years ago, called for the listing of Jews”.
Concerning the 13-month pension, Gulyás said the Socialist government of Ferenc Gyurcsány had scrapped the measure in the 2000s, and Márki-Zay, too, was against it.
“So the 13th-month pension would obviously be under threat if the left came to power,”
Asked if a new left-wing government could be expected to privatise health care, Gulyás said the last left-wing government had wanted to privatise medical care and hospitals. “And now their prime ministerial candidate is saying that only privatisation can help the sector in the current situation,” Gulyás said.
“Péter Márki-Zay thinks health care is a business.”
He also said that most remarks coming from the opposition were not criticisms levelled at the government but rather
“open hate-mongering”.
Gulyás noted that rising energy prices had started “an inflationary spiral” in the world, and he insisted that the EU’s energy policy would result in further price hikes. The government is determined to fight higher prices and save people from the burden of inflation as much as possible, he said, adding that the government’s scheme reducing utility bills had helped each households save 500,000 forints, while he also hailed the government’s move to put a cap on fuel prices, saying that the government would decide whether to maintain that measure in the middle of February.
Meanwhile, government spokeswoman Alexandra Szentkirályi said the government would contribute funding to localities with populations under 5,000 to finance pay hikes for their mayors.
Hungary’s government will continue to compensate local councils for a shortfall in their local business tax revenues, and is engaged in talks on easing the burden on them stemming from the increase in the minimum wage, the finance ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
The government’s recently-announced tenders for 140 billion forints (EUR 383.5m) in funding to improve energy efficiency in smaller settlements aims to protect them from rising energy prices, the ministry cited state secretary Péter Banai as saying at a meeting with Károly Szita, head of the Association of Cities with County Rights (MJVSZ).
The ministry noted that the government has cut the local business tax for small businesses to 1 percent.
Settlements with populations under 25,000 will be fully compensated for the resulting revenue shortfall, while bigger cities will be compensated depending on their tax capacity,
the ministry said.
The government is also weighing the possibilities for reducing the burden on local councils stemming from the increase of the minimum wage for unskilled workers to a gross monthly 200,000 forints and for skilled labourers to 260,000 forints, the statement added.
The government will cut taxes by 1,500 billion forints (EUR 4.bn) in 2022, a video posted on Wednesday on Finance Minister Mihály Varga’s Facebook page showed.
The personal income tax rebate for families raising children will amount to a 600 billion forint tax cut, the video said. The exemption from personal income tax of Hungarians under 25 will leave 140 billion forints with young people.
The government will cut payroll taxes to 13 percent from 17 percent, abolish the 1.5 percent vocational training contribution, reduce the social contribution tax by 2.5 percentage points, leaving an
additional 600 billion forints with companies.
The decision to reduce the small business tax (KIVA) to 10 percent from 11 percent will cut taxes for the businesses concerned by 10 billion forints , it said in the video. Extending the local business tax (HIPA) relief to SMEs into 2022 saves them 150 billion forints.
Hungary is deep in the fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic, with “the hard part still to come”, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in his regular weekly interview on public radio on Friday, adding that “the only thing that ensures protection is the jab”.
Those that are not inoculated are in “mortal danger”, Orbán said, but warned that the unvaccinated “pose a danger not only to themselves but to all others”. He warned that restrictive measures could not provide protection against the virus, just slow down its spread among the population.
Four to six months after the second shot immunisation will decrease,
and it is justified to take a booster, he said. “If everybody were inoculated, there would be no fourth wave or it would be just a small one,” the prime minister said. With everybody inoculated there will be no fifth wave, he said, adding that “we cannot avoid that everybody should be inoculated at the end of the day”.
Altogether 135 patients died of a Covid-related illness during the past 24 hours, while 11,289 new coronavirus infections were registered, koronavirus.gov.hu said on Friday. So far 6,017,807 people have received a first jab, while 5,788,775 have been fully vaccinated. Fully 1,765,000 Hungarians have received a booster jab.
The number of active infections stands at 128,124, while hospitals are treating 6,122 Covid-19 patients, 613 of whom need respiratory assistance. Since the first outbreak, 998,488 infections have been registered, while
the number of fatalities has risen to 32,780.
Fully 837,584 people have made a recovery. There are 59,177 people in official quarantine, while the number of tests taken stands at 8,006,581.
The airport in Debrecen, Hungary’s second largest city, is developing fast with the help of state, local government and private funding and is hoped the handle a larger number of passengers than before the coronavirus pandemic, Mayor László Papp said on Wednesday, at the topping out ceremony of a logistics facility.
Scheduled flights at the airport were launched in 2012 with annual passenger numbers increasing year by year, Papp said, noting that their number would have totalled close to one million in 2020, had the coronavirus not broken out.
“Although the number of passengers and flights had dropped because of the pandemic,
the airport’s development has not come to a halt,”
István Herdon, the CEO of the Xanga Group, said that the airport’s multimodal centre will be developed with a 4 billion forint investment (HUF 11m) in partnership with MNB Invest Ltd. The 4400sqm incubator building is 16 metres high and suitable for accommodating a passenger plane as a hangar.
Companies moving to the incubator next year will create 50-100 jobs at the airport, he said.
Tenants of municipally owned properties located in Hungary’s world heritage sites, under an amended law passed on Tuesday, will have the option of buying the property for its full market price unless they have rented for it 25 years or longer, in which case they will be entitled to a discount.
The original law adopted in June which had allowed tenants far more favourable terms was sent to the Constitutional Court for review by President János Áder.
Tenants must have rented the property for at least five years to qualify for purchasing it, while those who have rented it for 25 years or longer would pay 15 percent of the property’s market price, according to the amended law in line with the top court’s ruling.
Tenants who trade a property of their own for their rented one are given the option of purchasing it at 35-50 percent of market price, depending on the decision of the local government which owns the property.
Párbeszéd (Dialogue for Hungary) and LMP have developed a proposal to amend the act that would allow people who have been tenants of municipal apartments in the Buda Castle District since 1993−95 to buy real estate.
The motion to amend Act LXXVIII of 1993 on the lease and alienation of apartments and premises was announced by politicians of opposition parties at a press conference on Facebook on Wednesday.
During the last municipal election, Párbeszéd undertook to ensure a fair situation for those municipal tenants who were unable to buy the rental properties in which they live after the regime change, the mayor of District I and a politician of Párbeszéd, Márta Váradiné Naszályi, explained.
The aim is to allow the purchase of real estate for tenants who have been renting property in the Buda Castle District for almost three decades in accordance with the conditions in place at the time of the housing privatisation,
writes 444. Antal Csárdi, a Member of Parliament for the city centre and the Castle District and a member of LMP, emphasised that their motion was developed to remedy the unworthy situation that has affected the lives of the people living in the Buda Castle District for many decades.
The new proposal meets the criteria set by the Constitutional Court and also takes into account the ownership interests of the local government.
This summer, the Parliament adopted an amendment to Act LXXVIII of 1993 that enables tenants of municipal apartments to purchase properties on World Heritage Sites for a fraction of the market price.
The first version of the amendment proposed by Fidesz MP László Böröcz would have obligated local governments to sell properties on World Heritage Sites to tenants, even if they had only moved in 1−2 years ago, writes Telex. However, opposition politicians, non-governmental organisations, and even some of Fidesz’s mayors protested against Böröcz’s proposal. Thus, Fidesz amended the proposal so that local governments could only sell properties located on World Heritage Sites and their protected area, in listed buildings, or in houses that were subject to the prohibition of alienation and encumbrance, but this prohibition has been lifted.
The local government of Budapest said in a statement issued yesterday that the speed with which the virus spreads is accelerating again. They added that the daily number of new infections has been above 1,000 for days. Since more than five pc of tests turn out to be positive, the authorities lost control over the spread of the virus, the local government of the capital concluded.
What would the proposal of Budapest mean for residents and tourists?
According to portfolio.hu, Budapest’s local government says they do not have the power to reintroduce obligatory mask-wearing. That is because of the state of emergency which will last at least until next January. As a result, currently, only the government can decide on the issue. Therefore, Gergely Karácsony, Budapest’s lord mayor, sent a letter to Interior Minister Sándor Pintér. He asked the government to reintroduce the rules of mask-wearing before July 3. Or, if they do not accept that, he would like the decision-making power given back to local governments.
He referred in the letter to a recent statement of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The institute said that vaccination is the only solution in getting rid of the coronavirus. However, they highlighted also that thousands of people could survive if the government listened to healthcare professionals about the importance of using face masks.
If the government accepted the proposal of Budapest, it would mean obligatory face mask-wearing in closed spaces and on vehicles of public transportation.
PM Orbán talked about mask-wearing as well
Interestingly, PM Orbán urged the public to consider wearing face masks again in his Friday morning radio interview. He added that masks alone did not guarantee protection against the infection. Orbán said the vaccines work, as less than one per cent of those inoculated were getting infected with Covid.
He urged people to get vaccinated, warning that the Delta variant of the virus was far more aggressive than the previous variants.
Over the summer, Hungary made the necessary preparations to manage a serious wave of the pandemic in the autumn without bringing back lockdowns. He added that the country had enough vaccines, hospital beds, ventilators, medicine, nurses, and doctors to tackle the coming wave. Orbán noted, however, that the fourth wave was not yet as strong in Hungary as in many other countries.
Hungary has a good chance to develop its own coronavirus vaccine in its own vaccine plant,
Orbán said. But because this is not yet certain, Hungary must make sure that it orders enough vaccines developed elsewhere. Meanwhile, the country makes the necessary preparations to produce its own jabs with Russian technology.
Parliament favours the Housing Act on Tuesday, which enables tenants of municipal housing to buy homes in World Heritage sites for a fraction of the market price. The ratio of the votes ended up being 134 votes in favour and 25 against.
The first version of the Housing Act came from the representative of László Böröcz, and then it was stated that local governments would be obliged to sell rental apartments in World Heritage areas to tenants, even if they had only moved in 1-2 years ago. There was no provision in the draft that tenants who received housing below the market price could not pass it on at a much higher price.
Fidesz’s mayors also protested against Böröcz’s proposal, as did opposition politicians and non-governmental organisations, as it would have made it impossible for local governments to help the locals with their housing problems and would have undermined their autonomy.
Fidesz then amended the proposal that local governments should only sell flats that are located in a World Heritage Site and its protected area, in a listed building, or in houses that were then subject to a ban on alienation and encumbrance, but have since lifted this restriction. It has also been stipulated that the tenant can only buy the apartment if they had an indefinite tenancy on 31 December 2020 and its duration reaches five years.
However, another amendment was made later, and this version was the one now voted on by the Parliament:
in the case of exchanged rental rights, the purchase price of 50 per cent was reduced to 35 per cent,
the instalment payment period, once reduced from 25 to 15 years, will be reinstated to 25 years,
it was included in the text only in relation to the Castle District that out of the approximately 800 flats that can be purchased here, the function of those located on the ground floor can be changed to commercial, service and cultural purposes,
Companies cannot buy a rental apartment in the Castle, and there can be a maximum of two apartments owned by a single private individual; only EU citizens can acquire ownership.
The story of the newly inaugurated Hungarian Black Lives Matter Movement statue might be the shortest story of any statue in history. The story of the sculpture started in August 2020 and met a surprisingly rapid end just one day after its inauguration.
Back in January, The Guardian was talking about the sculpture of Péter Szalay who have applied for the competition to create monuments to show compassion with the Black Lives Matter Movement. The competition was put forth in August last year and a professional jury have chosen six creations to put them across the 9th district of Budapest.
The statue that has sparked controversy is a reworked Statue of Liberty kneeling and holding her right hand with a closed fist up to the sky. The statue was made using 3D printers and consisted of several larger chunks which sparkled in the colour of the rainbow also to draw attention to LGBTQ issues.
As we have written earlier, the statue was previously exhibited in a private gallery, where no one had a problem with the work. “Even yesterday, I thought that the statue would not be harmed. I thought that the citizens of Budapest were mature enough to watch a public statue and not hurt it. Therefore, I am a little disappointed now,” said Krisztina Baranyi, the mayor of the district, to Telex.
Unfortunately, the statue has faced quite a humiliating series of events. Many different groups with different worldview have attacked the statue both verbally and both physically. One of these groups was the Our Homeland Movement, which said the statue was
“an anti-European, anti-white, anti-heterosexual, and anti-Christian symbol”.
They erected a cross beside the statue then, on the same day as the inauguration, have managed to box in the statue with a couple of wood panels adding a sticker that read: “Blacks would not like the rainbow either”.
Photo: www.facebook.com/Orbán Balázs
After this, Telex reported that a man in black clothing has climbed up on the box and poured white paint over the statue. The events have escalated quickly and after the police have managed to find the perpetrator, more police officers arrived at the scene and guarded the new landmark. According to some information, there were even armed soldiers around the statue’s place.
Even this could not alter the fate of the statue as by Friday morning, the statue was smashed, broken and pushed off of its plinth. According to Telex, the perpetrators were from the Légió Hungária, a far-right racist movement.
The news portal also asked the artist’s opinion about the fate of his artwork, to which he replied unexpectedly. Péter Szalay said that he was expecting that the statue would be demolished but he expected it to happen even sooner. Even though it lived through one night, technically the statue was demolished within less than 24 hours.
The creator also said that he did not want the statue, Prism as it was called, to be a propaganda. According to the work’s creator, the statue itself does not proclaim anything and that the fate of his creation is also part of the story of the art piece.
The mayor of the district also reacted to the questions of Telex and she said that she did not regret her decision and would erect another similar statue again any time, although she added that she did not expect people to destroy the art piece. Previously it was exhibited in a private gallery and no one had any problem with it, but when it was relocated to the streets, it got destroyed. The mayor of the district added that she was disappointed in people.
So, this was the tragic and eventful story of Hungary’s Black Lives Matter statue that also drove the attention to LGBTQ issues and have lived only a little bit longer than a Tisza mayfly. The good news is, that a collector from Szombathely have contacted the artist and would like to add the broken statue to the collection.
On another note, the creator Péter Szalay have created five similar pieces of art and recently sold one for HUF 2.7 million (€ 7,400) which is not that bad, considering he told the police that the statue was made from approximately HUF 40,000 (€ 110) worth of materials.
Yesterday, a rainbow-coloured statue in honour of the Black Lives Matter movement was inaugurated in Budapest. According to the plans, it would have stayed in the ninth district of the Hungarian capital for two weeks. However, the statue could not stand there for as long.
It was revealed earlier that a work related to the BLM movement would be exhibited in Budapest. This was opposed by many, including the Our Homeland Movement, who said the statue was “an anti-European, anti-white, anti-heterosexual, and anti-Christian symbol”. However, the statue had been made, and it was inaugurated yesterday.
It was planned that the rainbow-coloured statue would have been displayed until April 14th. However, in the time since the statue was erected,
the statue was fenced up, then doused with paint, and demolished and smashed on Friday morning.
Péter Szalay, the creator of the statue, said that he did not want to create political propaganda, but the fact that many people reacted this way is very telling. In August 2020, the 9th district of Budapest announced a competition for independent public works. The professional jury selected six works that were to be exhibited at different points in the district. However, only the work of Péter Szalay had such an adventurous journey.
In addition to the Our Homeland Movement, Zsolt Bayer, a Fidesz insider, said earlier that the statue would be demolished immediately after it was erected. Although Bayer had nothing to do with it, members of the Legion Hungaria far-right organisation tore down the statue. A video of the sculpture was also made, which was later deleted. It was added to the video: “Yesterday, it was set up by the left district government, and we demolished it this morning, true to our previous promises. Of course, the police acted immediately, caught Béla Incze, a member of the leadership of our Movement, who demolished the statue.”
The barely one-metre statue was hit by 3 attacks in one day.
According to Péter Szalay, the fate of the statue is also symbolic. The creator reckoned that the statue would not last for a day. He added that there was nothing ideological to say about the work itself. “It’s not a thing that speaks against either side. There’s no claim in it that Black Lives Matter or this is pro-homosexual. And there’s no message that the BLM is bad,” said Szalay.
The statue was previously exhibited in a private gallery, where no one had a problem with the work. “Even yesterday, I thought that the statue would not be harmed. I thought that the citizens of Budapest were mature enough to watch a public statue and not hurt it. Therefore, I am a little disappointed now,” said Krisztina Baranyi, the mayor of the district, to telex.hu.
There are no plans to replace the statue.
However, the owner of a collection from Szombathely has already applied for the broken work, and the statue can probably take a break. At least what is left of it.
A one-metre-tall rainbow-coloured Black Lives Matter statue has been erected in Ferenc Square in Budapest’s 9th District. A tender was announced last August to have independent public works on the city streets again. A professional jury selected six works from the submitted entries, out of which four were exhibited today.
Needless to say, the project sparked serious anger in recent months. Some threatened to overthrow it, while others (such as the Our Homeland Movement) claim that it is an “anti-European, anti-white, anti-heterosexual, and anti-Christian symbol”.
According to the plans, the rainbow-coloured statue will be exhibited in Ferenc Square until April 14. It is one metre high and was created by Péter Szalay using 3D printing technology. The sculpture paraphrases the New York Statue of Liberty in a kneeling pose with a raised fist, referring to American footballer Colin Kaepernick’s gesture, which became a symbol of the anti-racist movement.
Photo: www.facebook.com/Robert Carrithers
The professional jury evaluated the work of Péter Szalay as follows: “It is a paraphrase of a public memorial sculpture that surfaces current social and political issues: Black Lives Matter and prejudices about LGBTQ. The kneeling gesture of the sculpture also refers to the sculptural decision-making movements in the public space, so it also reflects the current situation of the work of art.
According to Telex, the idea came from the deputy mayor of the district because she wanted to put an end to the practice of making sculptures and other public works in Hungary only on political orders.
Krisztina Baranyi, the mayor of Ferencváros, previously told Euronews that she thinks it is important to set up the installation in Budapest because the BLM goals against racism and police brutality are as relevant in Hungary as anywhere else. As an example, she mentioned the Orbán government’s “relentless campaign” against migrants and refugees, as well as the systematic discrimination against the Roma in Hungary.
Photo: www.facebook.com/Orbán Balázs
The Head of the Prime Minister’s Office, Gergely Gulyás, said in December that the Black Lives Matter in the United States is essentially a racist movement that does not recognise equality, which should be a normal human right by 20th century standards. Therefore, the racist is not the person who opposes the erection of such a statue but the one who erects the statue, Gulyás said.
UPDATE
The statue was only able to stand undisturbed for a few hours due to far-right protesters. According to Azonnali, protesters from Legion Hungary and Our Homeland simply boarded up the rainbow-coloured statue, so it could not even be seen.
UPDATE 2
Telex writes the statue was knocked down around half past eight in the morning, while the police were there in the square anyway because they were out on the scene all night. According to reports, the perpetrators did not want to run away from the police. The statue has been surrounded by police tapes.
Hungary’s local council-run outpatient clinics will be managed by the local hospitals until the expiration of the special legal order in connection with measures aimed at protecting the country against the coronavirus pandemic, the government’s coronavirus press centre said on Tuesday.
The move is aimed at improving patient care, easing the burden on health-care workers and ensuring the implementation of Hungary’s Covid-19 vaccination strategy, the centre told MTI.
It will also ensure that the health-care system operates under a single leadership, thereby improving the effectiveness of protective measures against the virus, it added.
The centre also emphasised the importance of having outpatient clinics participate in the health-care sector’s pandemic defence efforts and take part in the country’s mass vaccination drive.
The government will therefore issue a decree authorising hospitals to oversee the operations of outpatient clinics in their areas for the duration of the special legal order, the centre said.
The decree will also expand the authority of county hospitals, university clinics and the capital’s central hospitals to oversee all activities related to health care in their respective areas.
The decree will soon be published in the official gazette Magyar Közlöny, the centre added.
Budapest and several other local municipalities continue to be ready to set up coronavirus vaccination points, the mayor of Budapest said on Wednesday.
In a Facebook entry, Gergely Karácsony called on the government to “stop fighting and start cooperating”. He said there was a need for cooperation and expressing sympathy for victims of the epidemic, which requires that all possible forms of help should be utilised to speed up the vaccination drive.
He asked the government to make use of local municipalities’ assistance, adding that
“there is no such thing as opposition vaccination or government party vaccination”.
The coronavirus press centre’s vaccination team said in response that there was no shortage of vaccination points, but of vaccines.
The body called on Karácsony and “other left-wing mayors” to “stop generating confusion”.
“The selection of vaccination points is the task of the epidemiological authority and the national vaccination working team rather than campaigning and anti-vaxer left-wing mayors,” it added. Some 6,752 vaccination points have been selected and nearly 6,000 are in operation at GPs’ surgeries and hospitals.
More vaccination points will only be necessary if enough vaccines arrive for mass vaccination, the team said.
Developments in Budapest can proceed if the national government and city administration find a way to cooperate, Balázs Fürjes, the state secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office in charge of developments in Budapest and its agglomeration, said on Saturday, commenting on Mayor Gergely Karácsony’s urban development plans.
In a statement, Fürjes welcomed Karácsony’s coming round to agreeing with the government on several issues, choosing “cooperation instead of warfare”. The government, he added, was open to having a dialogue.
The mayor, he noted, had accepted the government’s proposal to hold the next meeting of the Metropolitan Public Development Council on March 18 and to discuss the use of EU funds in Budapest.
Implicit in Karácsony’s willingness to discuss development plans was his acknowledgement that Budapest’s budget was solid, he said.
He added that the mayor had abandoned his previous position and no longer insisted on “tax hikes, austerity, or indebtedness”.
Fürjes said the government had succeeded in preventing this stance and had thereby protected Budapest’s employees and businesses from “the town hall’s bad economic policies”.
It was welcome, he added, that Karácsony now agreed that investments and developments were needed in Budapest to protect jobs, businesses, and families.
The state secretary highlighted three key areas of development: housing, transport, and greening.
Fürjes said that 3,000 billion forints (EUR 8.3 billion) of European Union development funding would be spent on Budapest developments,
focusing on transport, renewing the capital’s vehicle fleet, and increasing the quality of green areas.
A government committee comprising representatives of the Prime Minister’s Office, the interior ministry and the finance ministry will meet with representative bodies of every local municipality to discuss their finances, the head the PM’s office said on Wednesday.
Gergely Gulyás told a press conference after meeting mayors of towns with over 25,000 residents without county-seat status that local municipalities had seen a steep rise in revenues between 2011 and 2019 thanks to Hungary’s high economic growth. The coronavirus epidemic resulted in a 5.2 percent recession last year but it was still “significantly below” the European Union average, he added.
The central budget registered a deficit of several thousand billion forints and the government’s position is that the burdens must be shared between the state and local municipalities, he said.
Despite this, he said the government wanted local municipalities to feel that while taking on extra burdens, they could still rely on the state.
At the same time, he said it had been the right decision by the government to allow SMEs to pay only half of their local business tax to local councils.
“This did not involve drawing money away, because the money stayed with the businesses … and they can guarantee jobs and in best cases even create jobs,”
Gulyás said. He added that local municipalities with less than 25,000 residents would get fully compensated for the loss in revenues.
In response to a question, Gulyás said opposition and ruling party mayors had been represented in similar numbers at Wednesday’s meeting.
Head of the local municipalities association MOSZ György Gémesi told a press conference after the meeting that 12 of the 23 local municipality representatives attending the meeting had three requests.
They asked for full compensation for the loss of local business tax revenues, they wanted to discuss compensation options for the costs of anti-epidemic efforts and ways to get back vehicle tax revenues.
None of these requests were met and Gulyás told them that he had no authority to change the government’s decisions, he said.
