DK to Help Local Governments Directly Apply at EU Tenders
The opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) has set up a working team to help local governments directly apply for European Union funding, without the involvement of the central government, party MEP Klára Dobrev said on Monday.
DK promised to offer its help already during last year’s EP election campaign and the party’s working team dubbed Direct Europe will start assisting local governments starting in January, Dobrev told an online press conference on Facebook.
She said their help was needed because many local governments wanted to stay in “a safe distance” from the “central government’s sticky fingers”.
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony is sapping the capital of ten years of reserves in two years, the local chapter of governing Fidesz said on their Facebook page on Saturday, a day after the city’s 2021 budget was announced.
The chapter said Karácsony had taken the unprecedented step of deciding on the budget by himself, without any discussion with the municipal council opposition.
They added that Karácsony had failed to show up at a scheduled meeting in the afternoon on Friday, and Fidesz council members, who had brought amendments to the budget, left after an hour and a half.
Mayors Call on Govt to Withdraw Decision Halving Local Business Tax
Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony and 37 mayors of Budapest districts and cities around Hungary demanded in a joint statement on Sunday that the government withdraw a decision on halving the local business tax.
The statement issued by an organisation dubbed Alliance of Free Cities said the move would be a “final blow” to local councils.
“It has nothing to do with managing the economic crisis but is about the power politics of Fidesz,”
the statement added. The mayors signing the statement called for joint protests by local councils that want to “protect the public services they offer to citizens and their ability to take action”.
Opposition Parties Slam Govt Supplement to Economic Protection Action Plan
A number of opposition parties criticised supplemental measures to the government’s plan to shield the economy from epidemic fallout announced by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Saturday.
The spokesman for the Democratic Coalition (DK) said the government had “dug deep into the pockets of municipal councils” by halving the local business tax.
The party called on the government to instead waive the corporate tax and give direct support to businesses in trouble as well as people who have lost their jobs because of “insufficient government action to protect workplaces”, Balázs Barkóczi said.
The Budapest municipality has prepared and submitted its 2021 “budget of survival”, designed to face “the challenges all local governments are grappling with”, Mayor Gergely Karácsony told an online press conference on Wednesday.
Speaking ahead of a meeting of the Hungarian Association of Local Governments (MOSZ), Karácsony said Budapest’s plummeting revenues were due to the coronavirus pandemic, the economic crisis and government policy in equal measure.
Karácsony insisted that between falling revenues and government austerity, the 2021 budget had less funds at its disposal than in 2013.
In the wake of the government’s offer for the takeover of the financing of certain large-scale developments, the Budapest mayor criticized the move. He would rather the government not take away funds from the capital, but instead have those representatives who were voted in by the capital’s residents make decisions and oversee developments It was […]Continue reading