Gergely Karácsony: “Where to return, we are on the edge of the abyss”



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Gergely Karácsony, Mayor of Budapest, gave a more extensive interview to RTL Klub. The first half of the conversation was about the government’s decision to cut the business tax for small and medium businesses in half next year.

Christmas said in this regard that this decision could not yet be accepted. It is not yet clear exactly how much loss of revenue this would mean for the capital, as the legislation related to the decision has yet to be enacted, at the moment only the Prime Minister’s announcement can be trusted. It is a question, for example, of where a company counts as medium, as this can significantly affect how much is involved.

The mayor also spoke about the fact that since corporate tax is only a very small part of the tax burden on businesses, 1 percent, and is only paid on profits, this measure cannot be said to help. companies in crisis. At the same time, local governments have a very serious argument. As said, it is estimated that the decision could mean a loss of 15-20 billion HUF for the municipality of Budapest, and roughly the same amount for the districts of Budapest.

Christmas also pointed out that this decision was just one more consecutive, during which the government cut local government resources: for example, the tax on water services quadrupled and the solidarity contribution increased considerably to HUF 35 billion per year. year.

As for the government’s response that the smaller local governments will be compensated and the big ones will be considered one by one, Karácsony said they cannot accept this: the larger local government associations will meet before January 15 and Christmas will be György Gémesi, the Hungarian local governments. In the company of the president of his association, he will demand that there be no special treatment, the government will compensate all local governments in the same way.

If this is not accepted by the government, it is not clear how Christmas will be able to guarantee the maintenance of public services, according to Christmas. But now he was talking about his unwillingness to accept the current plans. “Where we go back, we are on the brink of the abyss,” said Christmas after summarizing again what had already been taken from the capital city.

When asked how long if Christmas’s proposal was not fulfilled, how long the current level of public service could last, Christmas said he did not want to answer because he seriously believes that this current proposal cannot survive. But if he wanted to, he couldn’t, since the amounts were not yet clear and Orbán’s announcement was not accompanied by details. But, as said, taking a single forint means crossing the red line.

Responding to a question, Christmas said Orbán’s decision is about the country before the elections. And no matter how we deal with the crisis, no matter how the Hungarian economy settles, the government still takes additional resources away from local governments. The political purpose of this was exemplified by the fact that while one day the government allocated HUF 73 billion for the construction of the government district of Vár, the next day it was decided to deduct a smaller amount, which is extremely important for local governments. .

Christmas hopes the government will use propaganda to make city leaders unfit, but he believes that what is happening now is so transparent that Hungarian voters will not accept it.

The full stream, which also covered other topics, can be viewed here:

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