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feed your Visegrád vice.
Hungarians have voted on a referendum where they literally voted about some recently introduced fees, and, according to the opposition, about the government itself. With an overwhelming majority they rejected the fees.
Continue reading ‘After the Referendum’
The permanent campaign in Hungary goes on. This time, parties are campaigning for a referendum that will take place on March 9th. The topic: co-payment and tuition fee.
Continue reading ‘Playing the Referendum Game’
10 people are stranded on a floating ice-floe on Lake Balaton, came the news a few days ago. Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Of course, it was a hoax, but it resulted in the biggest rescue attempt ever around the lake. Some already call it the joke of the year.
Continue reading ‘A floating ice-floe’
Once again, a national strike was called by some trade unions for Monday, the 17th of December. The parliament is voting on that day about the health-care reform, among others, a kind of liberalization of the social security system (meaning: a limited permission of having multiple insurance companies). This is the second national strike, but the first one, a few weeks ago, was not too successful.
Continue reading ‘Day of Strikes’
…says the policeman. Well, this is not usual in Hungary. Some would, however, add: yet. Journalists were taken into custody after two recent protests in Budapest. Police says: they were disturbing their work. They say: they were reporting the event.
Continue reading ‘Are you a journalist? Then come with us…’
There is a small group, a theatre company in Budapest that undertook an interesting mission. They translated a puppet-show into lovari language, and since September the actors who are all children have been playing it like this. The story is a kind of Romeo and Julia story, but with mice, however, now the emphasis is on the acceptance of the “Otherness”.
Continue reading ‘The Theatre of Tolerance’
Yes, it was a mild autumn, at least compared to last year’s hot one. Not regarding the weather, of course. Many were afraid that last year’s riots will be repeated again - well, they were not. However, they tried it, but there were not enough extremists, and the police is much better than it was a year ago.
Continue reading ‘Budapest’s Mild Autumn’
Of course not, it is never free. But in Hungary, it is not only the social security that you pay from your salary to receive healthcare and not only the recently introduced co-payments like the 300 HUF (1 euro 20 cents) visit-fee. There is an additional, though not legal form of paying, a kind of gratuity: the so-called thank-you-money or parasolvency.
Continue reading ‘Healthcare for Free?’
Some were afraid, but Budapest remained calm on the first anniversary of last year’s riots. There were some protests, but with much less participants than last year, and this time there were no clashes between the protesters and the police. Some MPs were abused though.
Continue reading ‘Calm anniversary’
One and a half weeks have passed since the inauguration of the Hungarian Guards. Since then the political debate surrounding it is not smaller, but even bigger and bigger. Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány speaks about the resurrection of fascism, while Fidesz, the bigger opposition party accuses him with inciting hysteria.
Continue reading ‘Ongoing Debate: Fascism in Hungary?’
Singing people on the streets, everyone is happy? What happened in Budapest? Well, the Hungarian national football team has beaten Italy by 3:1, causing this year’s biggest sensation in football.
There are many analyses about how important sport and especially football is in forming and maintaining national identity. Wednesday night it was not important who voted for the left and who for the right, no one cared about it. The football team has won, nothing else really counted for many.
Continue reading ‘When football brings people together’
Numerous concerts, huge crowd, alcohol - more than 370 thousand people thought that these are enough reasons to spend one week on an island - on the Sziget festival in Budapest, which is, as the name says, on one of the islands of the city.
Continue reading ‘Sziget festival’
Hungarian Guards / Magyar Gárda. This is the name of a new organization of young men in Hungary. Some say that this is purely an extreme rightist paramilitary organization. According to themselves, they just offer opportunity to young people to promote tradition. Without judging, let’s see the facts.
Continue reading ‘Hungarian Guards’
If you want to go to a (state) university in Hungary, you do not need to pass an entrance exam any more. Whether you will be accepted or not depends on how you performed in high school. You receive points for your grades - the limits that you can enter universities with became public earlier this week. Since Hungarian higher educational system is worth some thoughts, this gives a good occasion to it.
Continue reading ‘Going to University’
Gays are sick - these three words represent the opinion of many Hungarian doctors. And nowadays, they express it openly. A few days after extreme rightists attacked the Gay Pride march in Budapest and beat several people just because they thought that they were gay and shouted “gays into the Danube, and the Jews after them”, an article was published on the official website of the Hungarian Medical Chamber.
Continue reading ‘Homophobic doctors’
Am I the only person in Hungary who’s getting bored with the endless whining rhetoric of the country’s opposition leader? You can of course argue that whining rhetoric is the job – even duty – of any opposition leader, but Victor Orbán seems to take it to the extreme.
It’s of course understandable that Orbán called for the PM’s resignation following his groundbreaking (and rather ineloquent) admission of lying about the county’s economy last year – what opposition leader in his right mind wouldn’t have pounced on such a juicy scandal? But that was last year, and Orbán now needs to get with the times. The Government’s austerity measures introduced at the end of last year already appear to be yielding positive results, if the Governor of the Bank of Hungary – an individual widely respected for his political neutrality – is to be believed.
Rather than making endless calls for Gyurcsany’s resignation and making absurd claims about how Hungary’s aspirations to join the euro would have by now have been a reality under his leadership – Orbán would do far better to get over the fact that he was ousted in 2002, that he’s not coming back as PM for a few years (if at all) and instead concentrate on making his party a little more credible.
The anniversary of any major event is arguably the ideal moment to take stock of its impact and legacy, but this year is a particularly poignant time to look at the enlargement of the EU, as we now have new members and newer members. Bulgaria and Romania’s accession this January provides us with a means of comparison between these two countries and those that joined back in 2004.
A visit to Brussels today reveals a city vastly different from what it was a few years ago. The capital of Europe has metamorphosed into one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities, bringing politicians, journalists, lobbyists and other professionals from the four corners of the continent (and beyond) together to “make Europe work.”
Yet we all know that Brussels is not Europe in microcosm. For all the EU’s achievements – the single market and currency, the four freedoms, consumer rights and of course enlargement – barriers, prejudices and misunderstandings still exist. “New Europe” is most certainly a bona fide member of the club, but the club hasn’t fully accepted it. Nowhere is this more clearly manifested than in certain old member states’ continued restrictions on the free movement of workers from new member states. Add to that President Sarkozy’s former criticisms of new EU members over their use of low corporate taxes to tempt employers to relocate jobs out of France and other Western European countries, and it becomes clear that both ‘halves’ of Europe have their grievances.
When it comes to economics, the picture is mixed. When they first joined, the new member states appeared to score highly on several fronts – liberal, accessible markets, prudent spending, dynamic growth and so forth. Disparities were inevitable however, and now we have the first CEE euro member, Slovenia, but also countries like Hungary which have incurred major budget deficits, although recent reports suggest the situation is starting to improve there.
These diverging economic trends have also impacted upon political sentiments. Nationalism has been on the rise in a number of key CEE countries – most notably in Poland and Hungary, and a combination of nationalism, history, and conflicts of interest have undoubtedly weakened the EU in conducting relations with neighbouring Russia since the 2004 enlargement.
Then there are the newest members of the club – Bulgaria and Romania. Their accession marked a poignant and proud moment in European history, and the social, political and economic benefits of the enlargement are clear for all to see. Compare the electric atmosphere on January 1st and the overall voter apathy in Bulgaria’s recent European elections however and some of the shine is taken off the whole story.
In spite of these issues and challenges, the EU’s newer members have contributed greatly to Europe’s overall development. It remains by far the most economically dynamic region in Europe (with a real GDP growth rate of 6% in 2006) and continues to attract significant investment from leading European and global businesses. New Europe now needs to push for full acceptance in the bloc – to dispel prejudices and build upon its successes to date. To this end, Slovenia’s Presidency of the EU in 2008 will prove vital. A well-run presidency will bury once and for all the perception that the EU is ultimately a club run by the big western players, and will act as a springboard to New Europe’s involvement in and contribution to the Union’s future.
“I am Gábor Szetey. The HR Under-Secretary of the government of the Hungarian Republic. I believe in God, in love, in freedom and in equality. I am Hungarian and European. I am an economist, an HR-leader. A partner, a friend, sometimes an opponent. And gay. Like you. Like hundreds of thousands in this country, who - I hope - will hear these sentences. Hooh. I expressed it.”
Continue reading ‘The Coming-out of the Under-Secretary’
The Hungarian police provides scholarships for young Roma. This year, they sign the contract with six of them, since 2000, they have signed 37 contracts. There are police high schools in country, who finishes it can become a policeman. Yearly 2-3 Roma get into these high schools.
Continue reading ‘Scholarship for Roma’
The Hungarian government has two new spokespersons. So what, could many say, they change quite often. But, one of them is a young, female political analyst, and the other one is Roma.
Continue reading ‘A Roma Spokesman for the Government’