"We will continue those practices exactly as we have until now, even if the European Court has told us to change them," Orbán said.Continue reading
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Tuesday highlighted economic stimulus, protection against the coronavirus pandemic and a referendum on protecting children as the main issues for 2022.
Orbán told the last government presser of 2021 that in 2021 the government had been able to turn to the use of vaccines and could abandon pandemic defence measures that were based on self-isolation. He said it had been clear to Hungary as early as the beginning of the year that only the vaccine would guarantee an effective defence against the pandemic. “Everything else just allowed us to buy time, but victory can only be achieved with the help of the vaccine,” he said.
Orbán noted that planned economic policy measures include such “serious experiments” as giving tax exemption to people under 25. Protection against the pandemic must continue because “we cannot expect the virus to leave us” in the first part of next year, he said. Protection will be focused on vaccination, he added.
In response to a question, the prime minister said he had plans for further welfare measures, without elaborating on the details.
Asked how localities could finance pay hikes for mayors without additional central funding, Orbán said: “They’re clever, they’ll figure it out.”
Gergely Gulyás, the prime minister’s chief of staff, noted that the government would compensate the revenue shortfall resulting from the decision to halve the local business tax for SMEs and sole proprietors automatically for settlements with populations under 25,000. He argued that settlements with populations over 25,000 could easily afford the pay hikes.
Meanwhile, Orbán said the government had not deprived local councils of the local business tax, arguing that the tax was benefiting SMEs.
Asked about teachers’ demands for higher wages, Orbán said “the teachers are right” to say that a 10 percent wage hike would not solve their problems. He said he could only promise a wage hike after seeing figures of the economy’s performance in the second half of the year and if Fidesz won the election next spring.
Commenting on a planned referendum on protecting children, he said there was a debate about who should control and supervise the education of children and what exclusive rights parents should have. “We reject the EU approach in this regard,” he said, adding that similarly to the question of immigration, Hungarians will be given a chance to express their opinion at a referendum.
In response to a question, the prime minister said the constitutional rules of procedure did not allow for the planned referendum on the Budapest campus of China’s Fudan University to be held before the spring parliamentary election.
Featured photo by Szilárd Koszticsák/MTI