The State Treasury has exempted the Budapest municipality from paying the solidarity contribution until mid-June, Gergely Karácsony, the city’s mayor, said on Facebook on Tuesday.
“We have made it! I promised Budapest citizens that, no matter what happens, we will survive and that I will guide the city to the formation of a new government. I can now report that the mission is accomplished,” he said.
Karácsony noted that the outgoing government had raised Budapest’s solidarity contribution 20-fold. The city was expected to pay HUF 100 billion into the central budget this year, he said.
“That would be enough to revamp Chain Bridge four times over,” Karácsony noted.
He said the government’s goal was “clearly to push the capital into insolvency and attack the opposition through it. We did not back down: we sued and won. The binding decision of the court said that sacking the city was unlawful.”
The Treasury’s decision gives the city “about a month after the formation of the government led by [Tisza leader] Péter Magyar to agree on steps ensuring that the city remains functional,” he said.
Meanwhile, Karácsony said he hoped that by the end of the year, an agreement could be reached on a draft Budapest law featured in the mayor’s program as well as Tisza’s election program.
He said the law would “bring secure and reliable conditions into the everyday life of the nation’s capital once and for all.”
