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BUDAPEST (Reuters) -Hungary has offered to buy Budapest Airport from its foreign shareholders, part of an effort to take it back into state hands and protect what the government says are national interests.
FILE PHOTO: General view of the Ferenc Liszt airport's terminal 2A in Budapest,Hungary,29 March 2016. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh/File Photo
Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government earlier this year expressed its interest in buying a majority stake in Hungary’s main international airport saying its past privatisation had been against the country’s “strategic interests”.
Orban, a nationalist often at loggerheads with the European Commission on a range of issues, has said he wants to see the airport in domestic hands, but until now its owners have expressed no interest in selling it. Since Orban took power in 2010, his government has boosted Hungarian ownership in strategic sectors such as energy, banking, and the media.