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30th October, 2025
Sziget Festival in danger as city council fails to provide help
Fidesz and Tisza party representatives on Budapest city council torpedoed a proposal to save the Sziget Festival submitted by mayor Gergely Karacsony by abstaining when it was put to a vote on Wednesday evening.
The proposal was supported by the parties behind Karacsony, as well as the Two-Tailed Dog Party and the Podmaniczky Movement.
Andrea Bujdoso, the leader of the Tisza group on city council, said before the vote that her party had submitted a compromise proposal on the issue during the day, and asked Karacsony to accept it and vote on that instead of his proposal.
David Vitezy, the leader of the Podmaniczky Movement, suggested that Karacsony could submit the Tisza amendment (since only the mayor can do this on the day of the general meeting) and see if a majority could be created behind it.
However, Karacsony said the issue had been discussed at three committee meetings and in council meetings, so the substantive debate had already been held.
He then ordered a break for consultation, but in the end the council voted on the original proposal, not the Tisza one.
“Then there will be no Sziget”, Karacsony wrote in his Facebook post on Wednesday night. “There will be no revenue for the city, and the national economy will lose tens of billions of forints.
“This will happen because the two biggest groups on city council, Tisza and Fidesz, decided so”.
He said city council’s decision causes concrete damage to Budapest and raises questions of responsibility, governance, expertise and trust.
He criticized the Tisza Party for changing its position daily, not providing coherent proposals and shifting all responsibility to others, while letting one of the city’s most important cultural events go to waste.
“From now on, all I can say is: I tried, we did everything, I’m sorry,” Karacsony added.
All parties supported saving the festival in principle, website 24 reports.
The debate throughout was about whether the city should terminate its five-year contract with the current owner of the festival rights on occupying the Hajogyari Island area, valid until 2026, without receiving a guarantee that the new owner would hold the event.
If the city opted to sever the contract, then Budapest would miss out on Ft 200 million next year, as the current owner would have to pay this amount even if it did not organize the festival, which has been losing money for years.
Fidesz argued that a city on the verge of bankruptcy could not afford to give up such a large sum, while Tisza objected that under the proposal, neither the new investor nor the state would take responsibility for whether the festival would be held.
Karacsony’s proposal was that the council would ask its ownership committee – which had voted down Karacsony’s proposal twice – to terminate the current public space occupancy contract at an extraordinary meeting for the third time, and to authorize the mayor to negotiate and conclude a contract with the new owners.
Karoly Gerendai, who founded the festival in 1993, but sold the management rights in 2017 and all his remaining shares in 2022, would now take back possession of Sziget, having founded a new company to save it.
Addressing the city council on Wednesday morning, Gerendai said the current owner had already decided not to organize the festival next year, so he asked the representatives to quickly terminate the current contract with the owner that still has one year left and then conclude a new one with the future owner at an extraordinary meeting, because they were running out of time.
He also said that if no agreement was reached, he would withdraw from the project. (24.hu; telex.hu; 444.hu; index.hu)
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30th October, 2025
Govt to raise state sector wages again
The government has decided to increase the wage of government sector workers by another 15% from January 1, following the increase on September 1, Public Administration and Regional Development Minister Tibor Navracsics announced on his Facebook page on Wednesday.
He recalled that the government raised the salaries of civil servants working at local governments by 15% on July 1 and increased the salaries of government officials working in government offices by 15% on September 1.
The salaries of both civil servants and government officials will increase by 15% from January 1, said Navracsics, adding that public servants will receive Ft 1 million per year as a fringe benefit from January 1, which they can use to repay housing loans. (portfolio.hu; blikk.hu; economx.hu)
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30th October, 2025
Magyar reports Balazs Orban over ads
Tisza Party leader Peter Magyar is filing a report against Balazs Orban because of a video recording made with artificial intelligence posted by the Fidesz campaign leader on his website on Tuesday.
The video presents an AI version of Magyar vowing to abolish the 13th-month pension and making other threats and promises that Magyar has not made.
Orban responded on Facebook that Peter Magyar wants to silence those who reveal his party’s real intentions. (telex.hu; index.hu; hvg.hu; 24.hu; 444.hu; hang.hu)
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30th October, 2025
Magyar urges opposition to speak up against Fidesz lies
Peter Magyar called on the leaders of the Democratic Coalition, Our Homeland and the Two-Tailed Dog parties to speak out against what he called “the Orban style of falsification, lies and incitement”.
If they do not, he declared, it will be obvious to everybody that they are an integral part of or servants of the System of National Crime, he wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.
Dog Party official David Nagy said on Facebook that “What is happening on the pages of Balazs Orban and the other nation-destroying content producers is something new: the kernel of truth has disappeared. It is not intentional misunderstandings, twisting of words or even the construction of lies: there is no truth behind the content”, he wrote, adding “without truth and reality there is no politics, no action and no democracy”.
Our Homeland president Laszlo Toroczkai replied on his X page that there is no doubt he condemns “Fidesz’s lies and mud-slinging campaigns and falsifications” but asked Magyar not to lie about his party.
Responding later, Democratic Coalition leader Klara Dobrev wrote that “of course, we stand up for the Tisza Party and Peter Magyar, and condemn Fidesz’s lying smear campaign with AI-generated content”.
She then chastised Magyar, saying that, as a former Fidesz member, he is implicated in past character assassinations. (telex.hu)
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30th October, 2025
District will restrict new entrants
Budapest’s 16th District will be the first of the city’s local governments to impose restrictions on who may move into the area, under a decree issued by Regional Development Minister Tibor Navracsics earlier this year.
A new regulation will enter into force in the Fidesz-led 16th District from January 1, setting restrictions on who may move there, or how many people can stay at one address and in what property, the tabloid Blikk reports.
In the so-called special zones, a maximum of seven people can share the same address in a flat or in a part of a house.
The new decree will give the local council a pre-emptive right to buy flats.
During the four months since Navracsics’s decree on “the self-identity of settlements” has been in force, 100 communities have approved local regulations that hampers or makes it impossible for outsiders to move there or buy properties.
The first settlement to take such a step, Mezokeresztes, in Borsod county, has already reversed its decision. (klubradio.hu; blikk.hu)
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30th October, 2025
Budapest coffers emptied
The government withdrew Ft 6.2 billion from the city of Budapest’s account on Tuesday evening, in what mayor Gergely Karacsony described as “a fatal blow”, saying that “public services provided to Budapest residents, including public transport, can no longer be operated at the usual and reasonably expected level.”
He said the government has so far taken a total of Ft 46 billion from Budapest, while the state provides Ft 22 billion for the performance of mandatory tasks, meaning that the city will certainly end the year in the red, and thus the safe operation of Budapest is definitely not sustainable.
Karacsony pointed out that the government has not responded to the city’s negotiation proposals for more than six months, even though the State Audit Office, the Metropolitan Audit Expert and the Constitutional Court have stated that Budapest’s financial situation cannot be resolved without an agreement.
Economy Minister Marton Nagy replied, writing that he does not understand Karacsony’s outrage because “no extraordinary unforeseen event has occurred”, adding that this is merely “a distraction from the fact that Budapest has gone bankrupt”.
According to Nagy, the city simply has to pay the public charges stipulated in the law.
Karacsony last reported a month ago that the government had taken a total of Ft 6.7 billion from Budapest’s account: Ft 6.2 billion, plus Ft 511 million in interest. (telex.hu; portfolio.hu; mfor.hu; index.hu; blikk.hu; hang.hu)
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