Hungary needs love and peace; it needs to bury the trenches, and a leadership that “doesn’t pretend to be rural and family-friendly, or Christian, but works every day in the interest of the Hungarian people,” Péter Magyar, who heads the Tisza Party’s list for the European parliamentary elections, said in Debrecen on Sunday.
Speaking at a gathering in the city centre, Magyar said “this is the largest political demonstration of the past decades”.
After marking Mothers’ Day, Magyar pledged that the party would double the family allowance if it received the mandate to govern.
Magyar, who also serves as deputy leader of the Tisza (Tisztelet és Szabadság, Respect and Freedom) party, said Hungary had received 40 thousand billion forints in European Union funding so far, and insisted that a significant portion of that money was in “private equity, yachts, castles, hotels, Bordeaux vineyards and offshore accounts.” He said Hungary was being operated as a “family company” which his party would dismantle if they came to power.
Ukraine war: pro-peace and peace talks
Regarding the Russia-Ukraine war, Magyar said the party was pro-peace and stood for peace talks as soon as possible.
The European parliamentary and local elections in June would be “a watershed moment”, and would be decided between the ruling Fidesz party and Tisza, Magyar said. “Those voting for Fidesz in 2024 would vote for the threat of war and war agitation, and those voting for Tisza will vote for peace, the future, and the safety and happinness of our children and grandchildren,” he said.
The Hungarian News Agency, MTI, did not make a photo of the crowd. But here is one from Péter Magyar’s official page. Source: FB/Péter Magyar
Regarding the issue of battery manufacturing plants in Hungary, Magyar said the plants were putting people and the environment at risk, and had been built after “the dismantling of oversight institutions.” Should his party come to power, they will restore the environmental ministry and strengthen the authorities in question, and tighten laws and oversight, as well as ensure that the localities should benefit from the financial profit of the investments, he said.
Magyar also said his party had garnered the recommendations to set up a list in “almost every county”.
Here are some more photos of the unprecedented crowd:
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If the pro-war forces are allowed to keep their positions, then it must be expected that the war situation is here to stay for many years, the foreign minister told journalists ahead of the ruling parties’ election meeting in Vác, on the outskirts of Budapest, on Friday.
Europe is in a situation that is new to most Europeans, which is that there is a war on the continent, Péter Szijjártósaid. This war is happening in Hungary’s neighbourhood and poses serious dangers for all of Europe, including Hungary, he said. The closer a country is to the war, the greater risk it faces of the war spreading further, he added.
Szijjártó warned that European political leaders were “suffering from war psychosis”, and that their “irresponsible remarks and decisions carry the risk of the war spreading further”.
“We’ve even heard some completely mad positions, not only about sending European troops to Ukraine, but also about installing nuclear weapons,” he said.
Szijjártó said that if just one more European country got involved in the war, it would trigger a threat of a world war, arguing that this other country would certainly be a NATO member, and a NATO country getting into a direct conflict with Russia “would obviously result in the outbreak of another world war”.
Deciding about war or peace
He said that on June 9, European citizens would get to decide whether they want war or peace. A responsible decision could prevent the threat of a world war and a nuclear war, the minister said, adding that Hungary was the only country that clearly stood up for peace, and a pro-peace decision by Hungarians could provide huge support against the pressure of war.
Hungary, he said, had been confronted over the last two years with every consequence of there being a war in a neighbouring country. Wartime inflation caused the country’s energy expenditures to rise by more than ten billion euros “because Brussels’s response to the war ended up being a complete failure”, Szijjártó said.
He said both the European Union and NATO were preparing for the possibility of war with a five-year fundraising and financing plan.
“They want to pour tens of billions of euros into the war,” he added.
Stopping this requires sending pro-peace politicians to the European Parliament, Szijjártó said, adding that ruling Fidesz was the only one in Hungary that represented the cause of peace, while the left was awaiting “pro-war votes”.
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The leftist opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) has expressed concern that a new party formed by Péter Magyar was “going after successful and popular opposition” mayors in several districts of the capital, and this may compromise their chances of re-election.
The opposition mayors in question defeated Fidesz five years ago, DK spokeswoman Olga Kálmán told an online press briefing on Friday, adding that the incumbent mayors could not be unseated by “an emerging candidate unknown locally” unless opposition votes were divided.
DK, she said, is asking people to sign a petition, adding that whoever considered it important to defeat the ruling Fidesz party should sign it.
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Lénárd Borbély, the mayor of Budapest’s 21st district, has barred Prime Minister Viktor Orbán from endorsing a candidate of the ruling parties in the local district newspaper, as stated by Fidesz’s local chapter on Friday. Borbély refuted this claim.
Fidesz VP vs District mayor conflict in Budapest
Responding to Fidesz’s allegations in a Facebook post, the mayor of the 21st district clarified that he did not prohibit anyone, including PM Viktor Orbán, from appearing in the local paper. He added that his conflict was solely with Szilárd Németh, the Vice President of Fidesz and a prominent figure in the electoral district (Csepel-Soroksár), who wanted to get hold of several assets owned by the local government.
Borbély rejected proposed acquisitions, such as the district’s renowned Kis-Duna bench. The local government aims to maintain it as a space for local families to stroll, cycle or enjoy the idyllic natural environment. In contrast, Szilárd Németh proposed constructing a multi-storey hotel on the site, according to the local government’s leadership.
The Kis-Duna bench in Csepel. Source: csepelonkormanyzata – Instagram Taken by: Pálfalvi László
Csepel will always come first for Borbély
The district’s leader was elected with a massive majority in 2019 despite Csepel being left-leaning both in the 2018 and 2022 general elections. He recounted how Németh attacked him during the municipal election campaign and lamented the collaboration between local Fidesz and leftist parties to tarnish his image. “It is sad but true,” he concluded.
Running as an independent candidate and heading a local civil organisation, Borbély stands a chance of winning the municipal election in Csepel on the 9th of June. He affirmed that Csepel’s interests would always take precedence over aligning with any party’s political agenda or ambitions.
Budapest district mayor Lénárd Borbély and his team. Photo: FB/Lénárd Borbély
Fidesz claims Borbély committed a brutal attack on media freedom
Fidesz asserted that Borbély, who was expelled from the party a year ago, has been “misleading and dividing conservative voters for years.” They accused Borbély and his “pseudo-civic party” of “reviving the communist era of the 1950s.”
The ban “is a brutal attack on media freedom… Borbély and his lot have defiled the freedom of the media; furthermore, they have infringed upon fundamental rights such as freedom of expression, the right to information and voting rights,” stated Fidesz.
“They want to silence and ban from the political sphere both the Hungarian prime minister and the mayoral candidate of Fidesz and Christian Democrats,” the party said in its statement.
Photo: FB/Szilárd Németh
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Pensioners can count on Hungary’s government, Mihály Varga, the finance minister, and Zsolt Nyitrai, the chief advisor of PM Orbán, said in video posted on Facebook on Sunday.
Vargasaid that while there was a war waging in a neighbouring country and in the Middle East, and the budget was under extraordinary pressure, pensioners could count on the government.
After last year’s 18.5 percent pension increase, payments were raised by 6 percent early this year and the 13th month pension, which the left-wing government discontinued, was again paid out in February, the minister said.
“The good news is”, he added, that the 6 percent pension increase would mean an increase in the real value of pensions as annual inflation was expected to be lower than this.
The government, he said, was keeping its promise made in 2010 to maintain the purchasing power of pensions and even increase it. “Since 2010, we have doubled the amount of pensions and increased their real value by 20 percent,” Varga said.
Nyitrai said “Hungarians owe our elderly compatriots a debt of gratitude. They created the solid foundations on which we can build. Their knowledge and wisdom are indispensable. We stand up for the interests of pensioners and are protecting their pensions,” he said.
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At a campaign meeting in Budapest on Saturday, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the leader of Fidesz, said “the real sin” of Budapest’s mayor, Gergely Karácsony, was that he had presided over “so many missed opportunities”, the PM’s press chief said in a statement.
Now the capital was suffering the consequences of Karácsony’s inaction, Orbán told a briefing of local candidates and activists at the Fidesz office in the 5th district who were working on the campaign of the ruling party’s mayoral candidate, Alexandra Szentkiralyi.
He told the gathering that Fidesz’s Budapest operations, alongside the central government, must strive to get the most out of the nation’s capital.
“We must set big goals and work hard; and then we’ll win,” he said.
PM Orbán visited Ibolya Presszó on Ferenciek tere, a glamorous bar in downtown Budapest. Orbán said he spents a lot of time there during the university (he graduated from the ELTE law school a couple of blocks away).
Photo: FB/Orbán
Photo: FB/Orbán
Photo: FB/Orbán
Here is his Facebook post:
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Alexandra Szentkirályi, the ruling parties’ candidate for Budapest mayor in the upcoming municipal election, has collected “the required number or even more” of recommendation slips to run, she said before submitting the slips at the City Hall on Saturday.
The candidate thanked “the many thousand” Budapest residents for their support and pledged to visit “every nook and cranny” of the city to listen to them and share her programme.
She said she would be a mayor that “does not keep complaining but who is able to complete things, who does not point a finger to others and who is willing to work with the government to ensure development”. She said she would work so that “Budapest residents have a mayor rather than Ferenc Gyurcsány has one”.
Fidesz launches billboard campaign
Ruling Fidesz has launched an “outdoor” campaign of putting out billboards and distributing leaflets in preparation for the upcoming European parliamentary and municipal elections, the communications director of the party said in a video on Facebook on Sunday.
Tamás Menczer spoke standing in front of a billboard showing opposition politicians and the inscription “Brussels’s humble servants” and said Hungary’s “dollar left would do anything on instructions from Brussels”.
“If it were up to them we would go to war, there would be an influx of migrants, and we would have men dressed as women, that is the LGBTQ propaganda,” Menczer said. “We must not let Brussels decide on our life in cooperation with the dollar-left,” he added.
The candidates of ruling Fidesz have collected the recommendation slips necessary to run at the elections on June 9, Tamás Deutsch, the candidate leading Fidesz’s list at the EP elections, said on Sunday.
Deutsch said in a video on Facebook that Fidesz’s candidates for municipality representatives, mayors, as well as the county lists, Budapest mayoral candidate and the party’s European parliamentary list have received the necessary recommendations.
He thanked the party’s supporters for “making Fidesz the first to collect all recommendations.” He also thanked the party’s more than 50,000 volunteers “working at nearly 10,000 locations in 1,200 localities”.
“On June 9, 2024, peace only! Only Fidesz,” he concluded.
Dávid Vitézy, a candidate for mayor of Budapest backed by opposition LMP and a local association, unveiled his manifesto on Friday, promising to take the running of the city away from party politicians and put it in the hands of professional managers and vowing to build thousands of units of affordable housing.
Vitézy promises amusdment park,too
Vitézyalso pledged a new transport police force and five new tram lines, as well as cooperation with the central government on revamping the HEV suburban railway.
He also promised to “fight” to improve hospital conditions and to create new public parks, stressing the importance of green public areas and high-standard Danube river banks.
The economist who specialises in transport and mobility also pledged to put a scheme in place to resurface many of the city’s roads and to provide a “culture coupon” worth 10,000 forints to all Budapest residents.
Also, he said a new animal protection shelter would be established, and he promised that Budapest would once again have an amusement park.
101-point manifesto
He also called for giving new momentum to the upgrade of prefab homes, the protection of Budapest’s built heritage and vowed to establish a consulting office aimed at assisting in the upgrade of apartment buildings.
He said his manifesto also included the revamp of two dozen major junctions in the city’s outer districts, and he pledged to immediately call a new tram tender if elected. He also promised that one-third of Budapest’s public transport bus fleet would be electric by the end of his term.
Vitézy said the drafting of his 101-point manifesto had been coordinated by 25 experts and had taken into account the opinions of 5,673 Budapest residents. The candidate said he considered the document “a kind of job application”.
He called for “real urban development”, which he said meant that “instead of saying no to everything and . making excuses”, the city’s leadership needed to develop Budapest and build partnerships in line with a clear strategy.
Vitézy called for cooperation between Budapest and the European Union, international investors, the districts, the city’s agglomeration and the government “wherever we can find common ground”.
Budapest became battlefield
He said he was running for mayor because he believed no one was addressing Budapest’s biggest problems. He insisted that “the two major political sides have turned Budapest into a battlefield” and were “constantly pointing the finger at each other and complaining” instead of developing the city.
He said the capital was made up of more than just “the downtown tourism hub”, but the outer districts had been “abandoned” by politicians, and it was time to change that.
Vitézy criticised incumbent mayor Gergely Karacsony’s time in office, saying he had failed to deliver on most of his campaign promises. He said the administration had failed to implement a vigorous green city policy and had become too focused on national politics.
Meanwhile, Koloman Brenner, the Jobbik-Conservatives candidate, said on Facebook today that he was standing aside and would support Vitézy.
LMP publishes green manifesto
Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Friday that he had again spoken with the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak by phone on the rights of the ethnic Hungarian population in Transcarpathia, in the west of Ukraine.
Szijjártó said in a post on Facebook that they were in agreement that some progress had been made over the past weeks by the bilateral working group set up to address the matter but there was still a lot of work to be done. As a result, it was agreed that the working group would meet again in the second half of next week, he added.
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“We will free Budapest from the grip of [Ferenc] Gyurcsány,” Alexandra Szentkirályi, the ruling parties’ candidate for mayor in the upcoming municipal elections, said at her campaign opener held at the Bálna centre on Wednesday.
“It is high time we turned off the Gyurcsányshow in Budapest,” Szentkirályi said, adding that right-wing parties “have already demonstrated what this city is like when they control it”.
Concerning her programme, Szentkirályisaid she would “stem corruption at City Hall”, eliminate a “wasteful” municipal bureaucracy and a “chaos” in its traffic, while her administration would make the city “tidy, orderly, and liveable”.
She said she would create a municipal budget council to control the city’s financial stability, as well as provide a wifi service in public areas free of charge.
MEP sees good chance to leave ‘dictator Europe’ behind
Opposition LMP has called on Gergely Karácsony, Budapest’s incumbent mayor, and Alexandra Szentkirályi, ruling Fidesz’s mayoral candidate, to accept a debate with Dávid Vitézy, the green party’s candidate.
Máté Kanász-Nagy, LMP’s deputy parliamentary group leader, told a press conference on Saturday that the race between Karácsony and Szentkirályi was “sinking Budapest into the swamp of an intellectual civil war”, adding that this was costing the capital “a lot of opportunities”.
He insisted that Karácsony’s administration was “preoccupied with the intellectual civil war it is waging against Fidesz” instead of focusing on the city’s affairs.
A debate with Vitézy, he added, would also present the opportunity to “hold Karácsony and Szentkirályi to account”.
Kanász-Nagy said Karácsony would be asked why he had waited until now to announce the connection of the tram network on Pest side of the capital, why he wanted to sell a student hostel building in south Buda, why his administration had not investigated irregularities in connection with the metro upgrades and why “they stuffed the supervisory boards and boards of directors of Budapest-owned companies with party politicians”.
He said Szentkirályi would be asked why the government was diverting resources from the capital and why it was only allocating funding to projects like the plan to redevelop the Rakásrendező area in Budapest’s 14th district.
Budapest residents deserve to hear the candidates debate their plans in public, Kanász-Nagy said.
UPDATE 1: Fidesz said Szentkirályi would hold Budapest mayoral campaign launch event on Wednesday
Alexandra Szentkirályi, ruling Fidesz’s candidate for mayor of Budapest, will launch her campaign at an event at the Balna cultural centre on April 17, the party said on Saturday. Szentkirályi will announce her seven-point plan to bring change to Budapest at the event, Fidesz said on Facebook. The party said Budapest needed a mayor that was capable of working together with the government in the interest of the city.
Wednesday’s campaign event will also be addressed by László Baán, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Máté Kocsis, Fidesz’s parliamentary group leader, and István Tarlós, Budapest’s former mayor.
UPDATE 2: DK, Socialists, Párbeszéd hold election campaign launch rally
The opposition Democratic Coalition (DK), Socialist Party and Parbeszed held a joint rally to launch their European Parliament and local council election campaigns in Budapest on Sunday.
Addressing the event, DK MEP Klára Dobrev said voters would be judging Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government in the June 9 ballot. “If the majority on June 9 says they don’t want any more part of this kind of governance, then we will start fighting for early elections and won’t rest until we oust them,” Dobrev said.
She said that though the three parties were diverse, they were united in their goal “to end the Orban regime”. Dobrev said the alliance between the three parties was not just about the ongoing campaign, but had been formed with the purpose of “dismantling Orban’s regime and then creating a liveable, European Hungary”.
She said the government was one of “shame and failure”, insisting that “millions have reason to hope that it fails as soon as possible”.
The MEP said she wanted Hungary to be a strong state that gave everyone access to free education and health care.
Gergely Karácsony, the mayor of Budapest, called on voters to support free local councils and “a European Hungary” on June 9, saying free local councils were the “bridgehead” of the idea of the republic and a European Hungary.
He said Budapest was a republic and would remain so, adding that the city could only grow if voters decided to “keep it free” in the June election.
The mayor said Greens and social democrats were “the strongest of allies” because they both served justice.
Karácsony said he was proud of his five-year term as Budapest’s mayor, saying “we do what we say and we say what we think.”
Kata Tüttő, a deputy mayor of Budapest and MEP candidate of DK, the Socialists and Parbeszed, said that in the EP she aimed to work to improve the situation of women, gain friends for Hungary and strengthen social democracy.
Nicolas Schmit, the spitzenkandidat of the Party of European Socialists (PES), said the stakes of an EP election had never been higher. He said the election would be a choice between a right-wing Europe held by the “far right” and a progressive Europe led by social democrats.
Ruling Fidesz said in reaction that DK leader Ferenc Gyurcsány and the left had “wrecked the country once already”.
The party said in a statement that if it were up to Gyurcsány and the left, they would “take Hungary to war”, arguing that Gyurcsány himself had written that those who did not want to die for Ukraine were “bad people”
At stake on June 9 is whether there will be war or peace, Fidesz said. The government and the ruling parties want peace, while the left is on the side of war, the statement said.
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Plans are for the Budapest public to rent e-bikes from 2026 as part of the Bubi system, with the current fleet doubling and the number of stations also increasing, Gergely Karácsony, the city’s mayor, said on Tuesday.
At the press conference held at the new MOL Bubi station on the Kopaszi Dam, Karácsony said the Bubi 3.0 public bicycle rental system, starting in January 2026, would have 4,500 bicycles available at more rental points around the city.
There will be several stations, all of the micro-mobility points will be used, and significant public transport hubs outside the Hungária ring road will also be accessible with Bubi 3.0.
The mayor said it was very important that Bubi could respond to multiple needs, so
the plan is to have a fleet of 1,000 electrically powered bikes.
Katalin Walter, CEO of the Budapest Transport Centre (BKK), said the new Mol Bubi station at Kopaszi Dam is the 208th in a series of new stations. She pointed out that the number of stations has increased by about 30 percent in the last three years.
Katalin Walter said that since the launch of Bubi 2.0 in spring 2021, the number of hires has now exceeded 8 million. Daily experience also shows that the current public shuttle system, Bubi 2.0, is a “huge success”, she added.
The Budapest administration is again conducting an online survey of residents’ views on how the project to redevelop the Rakosrendezo district should be carried out and whether district municipalities should continue to run specialist outpatient care facilities, Gergely Karácsony, the city’s mayor, said on Tuesday.
The question was whether the Rákosrendező project should end up like a “Mini Dubai” or a “park city”, the mayor said in a Facebook post.
Questions also remain over whether the Hungarian government should sell the area in an open international procedure or “hide behind an intergovernmental contract”.
He also noted the residents would be asked whether outpatient clinics should be “taken away by the state”, as was the case with hospitals and schools.
Video in Hungarian:
Karacsony insisted that waiting lists in the capital had been shortened, while districts were provided with extra money for outpatient specialist care.
More than a 100,000 people participated in last year’s survey dubbed residents’ assembly, when the chief questions concerned traffic on Chain Bridge and a lawsuit the capital launched against the government, he noted.
Gergely Karácsony, the mayor of Budapest, has failed to deliver on the promises he made in his 2019 campaign, Alexandra Szentkirályi, the ruling Fidesz-Christian Democrat alliance’s mayoral candidate, said on Friday.
In a Facebook video discussing Karácsony’s track record, Szentkiralyi said the mayor had promised to make City Hall Park “nice and green”, but all that had happened instead was that the car park there had been “rearranged a little” and a “tiny garden” added. “The city deserves a lot more,” she said, adding that change was needed in Budapest.
Meanwhile, the opposition LMP party said Karácsony had “failed to keep even his simplest promise” that one-third of executives on the boards of Budapest-based companies would be women.
Alexandra Szentkirályi. Source: Facebook/Szentkirályi Alexandra
Delivering on this promise “would have only been a matter of will”, but “the party’s interests were more important than equality and his campaign promise,” Anna Süveg, LMP’s spokesperson, told a press conference.
She said Budapest transport centre BKK, transport company BKV and the Budapest Capital City Property Management Centre (BVFK) all had a single woman each on their board.
Süveg said her party was backing Karácsony’s other challenger, Dávid Vitézy, an urban development expert and former state secretary in charge of public transport, to deliver on this promise.
Dávid Vitézy. Photo: FB/Vitézy
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Brussels “is caught up in a spiral of war”, and the main question at the European parliamentary elections will be whether someone has a pro-peace or pro-war stance, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told public radio in an interview on Friday.
War psychosis in Brussels
Previously in European political battles, the main categories were between the right and left, globalists and sovereigntist forces, but recently a new dimension has opened up, and instead of party affiliations, what matters is whether someone is pro-peace or pro-war, Orbán said in the interview held in the Brussels Public Media Centre.
It would be best if Hungary and the other European countries sent as many pro-peace politicians to the EP and as few pro-war politicians as possible, he said.
The future of left-right cooperation, and who would be stronger, were also worth discussing “but what’s most important is stopping the war psychosis”, he added.
“There is a war atmosphere, war rhetoric and the logic of war” in Brussels, he said.
EU leaders talk as if they were fighting their own war against Russia, “unlike us, who, while not indifferent to human tragedy, are not a warring side”, Orbán said.
He said “distance” was needed, and “calm” was missing in Brussels. Brussels, he added, was fighting its own war against Russia on Ukraine’s side.
“They are at war, and they talk about the need to defeat Russia,” the prime minister said, adding that “they are taking on more and more to achieve that goal”.
Proposals to send Western troops
At first, they only talked about sending helmets to Ukraine, then it came to tanks and aircraft, “and now they’re talking about proposals to send western European soldiers to be stationed in Ukrainian territory”, he said, adding that no decision had been made yet about where and for what purpose, but the preparations were under way.
“We must be careful not to get sucked into the war psychosis and lose the ability to pursue the right direction based on Hungarian national interests,” he said.
Orbán said that 2-3 months ago what had been unimaginable had since become a simple everyday event. He noted that whereas once the Germans talked only about sending helmets, they were now discussing giving a missile system to Ukraine that would enable them to reach targets as far as Moscow.
Photo: MTI
The prime minister said he was a supporter of reasonable disputes but it was now necessary “to put our foot down” and demand ceasefire and peace talks because otherwise “they will suck us in”.
Hungarian left wing getting fed from America, Brussels
He also said that even in Hungary there was no consensus about the issue, because whereas the government maintained a sober and pro-peace attitude, the left wing was pro-war. The “umbilical cord”, the “alimentary canal” of the Hungarian left wing “are in Brussels and in America”, he said. “They are getting fed from there … they pay them from there, and this is why they represent the pro-war position”, he added.
Orbán said he was certain that “Hungary would be deep in the conflict currently spreading between western European countries and Russia” were it not for its national, right-wing government.
He warned that the first world war also started as a local conflict which then expanded.
Meanwhile, Orbán said Brussels was captive to George Soros’s network, and the Soros network was an integral part of European institutions. The Soros network “is so well established” that European institutions finance their operations from it, he added.
He said the European Commission, the European Parliament and “a fair number of prime ministers are clearly backed by Soros”. The Soros network “built up over the last 30 years” hampers the representation of the opinion of Europeans, the prime minister said.
Father and son: George and Alex Soros. Photo: FB/Alexander Soros
Ukrainian grain import
Regarding Ukrainian grain, Orbán said that although Hungary generally supports trade, investment and economic cooperation, it rejects Ukrainian grain imports to Europe as Brussels had set bureaucratic and rigid rules for European farmers while “there are no such regulations in place in Ukraine”, giving the country “a big competitive advantage”.
Hungary, he said, was among 6-7 European countries that produced more food than they consumed, and customers in western Europe were buying cheap Ukrainian grain instead of Hungarian farmers’ produce. “We’re making strenuous efforts to find markets for the Hungarian stocks before the next harvest,” he said, slamming Brussels for “turning a blind eye” to this problem.
Farmer protest. MTI/Illyés Tibor
“Brussels is in the heat of war. Ukraine is more important for them than the European farmers,” said Orbán, insisting that Brussels should either ban Ukrainian grain imports or employ the same loose regulations to Hungarian farmers as it applies to Ukraine.
The prime minister said that “although the European Union has been set up with the aim of ensuring peace and wellbeing”, Europe was now pervaded “by war and poor-being”.
PM Orbán: People are basically negative towards Brussels bureaucrats
“People are basically negative towards Brussels bureaucrats. Not towards the European Union, because everybody supports the ideal of cooperation… The problem is with Brussels bureaucrats.”
The prime minster was also asked about his ruling Fidesz party’s plans regarding Budapest after the party’s Budapest chapter named Alexandra Szentkiralyi, a government spokesperson, as their candidate for Budapest mayor in the upcoming municipal election.
Orbán, referring to the leader of the Democratic Coalition, Ferenc Gyurcsány, called for “Gyurcsány’s people” to be frozen out of circles influencing the capital’s administration.
Ferenc Gyurcsány. Photo: facebook.com/dk365
“The people who ruined the country before 2010 are all doing business in the capital, and their politics is the same as during their administration,” he said.
“Those who bankrupted Hungary are now bankrupting the capital,” Orbán said, adding that this was why “the coffers are empty, even though Budapest was once the richest city in Hungary”.
In the municipal elections held in June, hopefully a mayor would be elected who could prevent the capital’s complete bankruptcy, he added.
Orbán said Budapest was important for him and he was keen to address issues important for the city’s residents. “But today there is no more important question for them than whether the Hungarian left can achieve that Brussels takes away part of the high wages given to kindergarten and school teachers.”
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Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony announced on Tuesday that the forthcoming tram line connecting Budapest’s eleventh and fourth districts would mark “the most significant traffic development project in years to come”.
Addressing the project launch, the mayor noted that trams were a key plank of Budapest’s public transport system compared with other European cities. “We are still unsatisfied and want to make further developments,” he added.
Karácsony said that the new line and other parts of the project co-financed by the European Union will link parts of the city that already have a metro service, but the route require high-capacity services above ground.
As part of the Revitalising Avenues program, the inner sections of Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Avenue and Váci Avenue will undergo a makeover, with Nyugati Square set for a complete redevelopment. Plans include the removal of the current overpass at the junction, aimed at creating a more inviting and spacious urban area.
Photo: Daily News Hungary
The proposed changes aim to maintain the square’s throughput capacity while allowing traffic to cross the Great Boulevard at ground level. The introduction of high-capacity trams is expected to significantly improve commuting experiences, ensuring quicker and more comfortable journeys for passengers. Additionally, the redesigned area will serve a broader purpose, potentially transforming Nyugati Square into a vibrant and functional urban public space for Budapest residents.
Source: BKK
Karácsony emphasised the positive impact of the new trams, asserting that they would enable “many more people to reach their destination faster and more comfortably than now.”
Following the dispute between the Budapest municipality and the Hungarian government, passengers stand to benefit from Hungary’s new and improved public transport fee system, offering clarity on prices and passes.
Read also: Luxurious Mini-Dubai in Budapest: Europe’s tallest tower and a shopping mall underway, details HERE
Dávid Vitézy, an urban development expert and former state secretary in charge of public transport, has announced that he will run for Budapest mayor in the upcoming municipal elections.
In a video streamed on Facebook, Vitézy pledged “real development rather than party political fights, empty promises and the shunning of responsibility”.
Among the problems currently facing Budapest, Vitézy mentioned a housing shortage, saying “there aren’t enough affordable homes for sale and rents are too high”.
He insisted that suburban public transport services were sub-standard, while health services were deteriorating. Budapest’s public areas “are unattractive”, he said, citing a dearth of parks and pedestrian areas. “Areas outside the Grand Boulevard have been neglected, with all funds used to develop the tourist-beaten tracks of the Inner City,” he said.
Those problems, Vitézy said, had been neglected because
“Budapest has been made a battlefield of political parties … with the war between the two sides suffocating all developments: while the government blocks all major projects the city leadership acts as a martyr and falters — even when they have to opportunity to make progress.”
“We cannot wait for those to resolve the problems of Budapest who have caused those very problems,” Vitézy said, adding that he had comprehensive plans for “further developments, new parks, public spaces, renewal of the local train, new tramlines and affordable housing built on brownfield sites.”
As we wrote earlier, Fidesz nominated spokeswoman Szentkirályi as Budapest’s mayoral candidate; details HERE. This also means that Fidesz voters will be split between two candidates, which favours the current leadership.
Mayor Karácsony reacts
Mayor Gergely Karácsony posted his reaction:
After my election as Mayor, I asked Dávid Vitézy to take on a professional role. He said he couldn’t do it because Viktor Orbán wouldn’t let him, and he didn’t want to be a soldier who fled from North Korea to South Korea and was shot in the back by his own people. He was not allowed to do a professional job, now he is being sent to do a political one. No matter. Free Budapest takes in refugees and defeats invaders.
Opposition LMP has voiced its support for a run for Budapest mayor by Dávid Vitézy, a former state secretary for transport, saying his election would “free Budapest from its intellectual civil war”.
Máté Kanász-Nagy, the party’s deputy group leader, told a press conference on Saturday that over the past years, Budapest had become a “political battleground”, adding that the identities of the two mayoral candidates — incumbent mayor Gergely Karacsony and government spokeswoman Alexandra Szentkiralyi — “fuel these battles”.
He said that by nominating Szentkiralyi as its mayoral candidate, ruling Fidesz “has made it clear that it wants Budapest to be the government’s mouthpiece”, insisting that if elected, Szentkiralyi “would do what the prime minister tells her”.
Kanász-Nagy also said that at his commemoration of the national holiday on Friday, Karácsony “looked like he wants to be the leader of the opposition, a prime ministerial candidate again”.
He said the municipal elections were about deciding who should be entrusted with managing Budapest’s affairs and making the city better.
“LMP wants to free Budapest from this intellectual civil war,” Kanász-Nagy said, adding they believed the solution was electing “a third way candidate” in the form of David Vitézy.
Read also:
Fidesz nominates spokeswoman Szentkirályi as Budapest mayoral candidate – Read more HERE
The ruling Fidesz-Christian Democrat alliance has named Alexandra Szentkirályi, a government spokesperson, as their candidate for Budapest mayor in the upcoming municipal election.
Szentkirályi for Budapest mayoral candidate
Zsolt Láng, the head of Fidesz’s Budapest chapter, accused the incumbent leadership of having driven the city to bankruptcy and called “for change”.
Under Szentkirályi‘s leadership, Budapest could “gain new momentum and develop again”, Láng said.
Integrity Authority submits annual report to parliament
Hungary’s Integrity Authority has submitted its first annual report, for the year 2023, to parliament, showing that its five closed cases and sixteen ongoing cases involved European Union support worth 120 billion forints (EUR 304m), the body said on Thursday.
The statement citing Ferenc Biró, the body’s head, said that the establishment of the authority had been an important milestone, reflecting Hungary and the European Commission’s determination in respect of the fight against corruption. “Being an independent body, the authority strengthens the separation of powers and leads efforts to whiten the economy,” it added.
The president said the fact that a “credible institution” had been established within a year “demands respect”. In January 2023, other than “a handful of dedicated employees”, it had no own assets and no offices, “practically it had nothing”, he added.
He said the authority had identified “inefficient elements” and faults of the public procurement and asset declaration systems. The authority has made its proposals to address problems and recommended cost-effective solutions which are easy to introduce, he added. The authority’s reports and the establishment of a platform for anonymous reporting aim to restore public trust and promote a culture of accountability, he said.
Biró said the authority also had plenty to do in the area of prevention. Its mission goes beyond execution, calling for cultural change in favour of zero tolerance, he added.
In order to enable the authority to fulfil its goal, the issue of spheres of authority must be placed on the agenda, he said. “This is the number one priority of the Integrity Authority and it requests the support of the government, parliament and the European Commission accordingly,” he added.
