Archive for April 4th, 2011

Key political risks to watch in Hungary – FACTBOX

Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s centre-right Fidesz government remains a favourite with voters even though public support for the party has dropped since last year’s election landslide, March opinion polls showed.

The government needs to table concrete fiscal reforms by July and implement them fully in order to contain the budget deficit next year and in 2013.

In March, the government presented steps which it says will reduce public debt to 65-70 percent of economic output by the end of 2014 from around 80 percent now by cutting spending, but the central bank has warned the steps could curb economic growth.

Markets have welcomed the government’s reform plans and the country successfully placed $3.75 billion in dollar-denominated bonds in March, which covers more than half of Hungary’s planned 4 billion euro foreign currency issues this year.

The forint has rallied and Hungary’s 5-year CDS dropped to around 260 basis points from this year’s peaks of near 400 basis points in early January.

read whole article Key political risks to watch in Hungary-FACTBOX 08:41 Hours ago.

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Twitter in Hungary

ONE of the first things new visitors to Hungary notice is how polite people are. An everyday courtesy still thrives here that has faded in western Europe. Strangers greet each other with a cheery “Jó napot kívánok” (“I wish you a good morning”) when they step into a lift and “Viszontlátásra” (“Goodbye”) when they step out. “Jó étvágyat kívánok” (“I wish you a good appetite”) is the usual salutation, even to strangers, when someone is eating.

But as a passionate people, Hungarians also have a rich vocabulary of swear words. Few more, it seems, than Tamas Deutsch, a member of the European Parliament from Fidesz, the ruling party. On March 21st Mr Deutsch tweeted the following about Ferenc Gyurcsány, a former prime minister from the opposition Socialists: “Vannak szemét alakok.Vannak aljas emberek.Vannak rosszindulatú örültek.Vannak irtózatos gecik.Vannak gusztustalan rohadékok.És van Gyurcsány”, which more or less translates as: “There are pieces of shit. There are vile people. There are malevolent madmen. There are revolting dribbles of semen. There are disgusting rotters. And there is Gyurcsány.” (The lack of spaces between sentences is presumably explained by Mr Deutsch’s keenness to stay within the 140-character limit imposed by Twitter.)

Not every Socialist attracts Mr Deutsch’s ire. Last week, after being interviewed by Zsuzsa Demcsák, a television journalist who served as government spokeswoman under Mr Gyurcsány (before she had to resign after some ill-judged comments about the quality of state childcare), he sent out a very different sort of tweet. “Jó volt újra személyesen találkozni Demcsák Zsuzsával. Képernyÿn is gyönyörÿ, de az életben még szebb!” (“It was good to meet Zsuzsa Demcsák. She is beautiful on screen and even more in real life!”) Mr Deutsch told me he stands by his tweets. “My aim was to be honest and direct, as Twitter is a media where personal tone is commonly used and accepted.”

Battered by a recent furore over its controversial new media law, the Hungarian government recently hired Project Associates, a London-based PR firm, for £100,000 to advise on burnishing the country’s image. Perhaps the company could start with lessons in acceptable language in public discourse.

via Twitter in Hungary: Tamas’s tweets | The Economist.

2011
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Six months on, chemical spill still haunts Hungary

The long-term impact of the spill has still not been fully determined and the government is having to step in and take a hand in the recovery of the region.

“We have banned the planting of vegetables,” disaster commissioner Gyorgy Bakondi told Deutsche Welle. “We still don’t know the consequences in the long term.”

Hundreds of homes were affected, said Bakondi, with some 60 families requesting to be relocated.

The firm that ran the plant in Ajka, the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company, is now run by the government.  Authorities have also frozen the assets of the owners amid a criminal investigation against them, according to Bakondi.

But environmentalists and opposition party members are still unhappy with the proceedings. They say authorities were aware of the risks posed by the plant because of another, smaller incident at the Ajka plant in the 1990s.

“One month after the disaster, the government said that the company was guilty,” said Rebeka Szabo, a green liberal parliamentarian of the Politics Can Be Different Party (LMP).

She said the process should have gone through the courts before making such a judgment, and that the government was putting too much of the blame on the company, when it should have been held more accountable itself.

“I felt that they wanted to push the responsibility on the company, although our study revealed as well that a lot depended on the authorities,” said Szabo. “And they made a lot of mistakes in the past which led, finally, to this tragedy.”

Who has to pay?

While legal procedures are under way, concerns remain that Hungarian taxpayers will have to foot the multimillion euro bill.

Hungary, currently serving its six-month European Union presidency, is under pressure to propose a bill to oblige European countries to have enough available funds in case of disaster.

Among those pressuring Hungary is Reinhard Bütikofer, a German member of the European Parliament and vice chairman of the Greens and European Free Alliance Group.

“Why don’t we have mandatory insurance schemes that make sure that when something happens, the polluter pays?” Bütikofer asked. “It should not be at the taxpayer’s expense.”

read whole story Six months on, chemical spill still haunts Hungary | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 04.04.2011.

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LMP strives to form credible gov’t alternative, says parliamentary group leader

Hungary’s green party, Politics Can Be Different (LMP), strives to be in position to form an alternative to the current government in the next elections, the party’s parliamentary group leader said after a two-day meeting of the European Greens in Budapest on Friday.

Andras Schiffer said that he believed there was a real chance for the greens to be in government, not only in western Europe, but in this part of the continent, too.

LMP, which first entered parliament in the elections last spring, polls around 5 percent, the threshold for gaining a parliamentary mandate.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit, co-chair of the European greens, said his party supported an electoral system based on proportional representation. He said his personal opinion was that the German system was the most balanced, whereas in many other counties segments of society failed to get represented due to the first-past-the-post system which favoured dominant parties.

Hungary is planning to change its electoral system in 2014 and to reduce the number of lawmakers to around 200 from 386 at present. The country operates a mixed system which combines party lists, proportional representation and first-past-the-post in individual constituencies. It appears that the current rubric will be changed in minor ways and Hungarians living beyond the borders will be allowed to cast ballots for party lists.

In connection with Hungary’s new media law, which the European greens discussed on Thursday, Schiffer said it is likely that some of the decisions brought about by the new media authority would end up in the Strasbourg courts. He said LMP is ready to take on representation of cases where basic rights appear to be violated.

Bernadett Szel, an LMP spokesperson, said green thinking was spreading all over Europe, and it is now clear that traditional ideologies can no longer respond to the needs of citizens.

Rebecca Harms, co-chair of the European parliamentary green group, told MTI, in connection with the Japan nuclear accident, she welcomed the fact that the Hungarian government had not set in stone its decision to expand Hungary’s sole nuclear plant at Paks. She said she trusted that Hungary had enough openness to allow a proper debate on whether to pursue the nuclear option or alternative energy sources. Even China, which has been pursuing an active nuclear policy, has decided to freeze plans in light of events in Japan, she said.

via Politics.Hu: LMP strives to form credible gov’t alternative, says parliamentary group leader.

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