End of the excessive deficit procedure and publicity tax

The European Commission is proposing to the Council to release Hungary from the excessive deficit procedure. This is good news as the procedure has already lasted so long that remaining in it would mean loss of cohesion funds for the country. Given that 95% of public investments are financed partially from EU funds, this would have meant a grave blow to the Hungarian economy and also food for further “liberty fight” demagogy against the EU. On the other hand, it is a triumph for the Orbán government and some fear that by that the EU is losing leverage in constraining the Hungarian government in its economic and political actions which are harming the country and going against European democratic principles. The dilemma is not easy to resolve, almost impossible, like most of the dilemmas which are caused by - the contradiction that whenever the government is sanctioned, it is the people who pay the price and - the communication tricks which make the EU a scapegoat if it is acting and a weakling if not. Whoever followed the developments can, however, see through these tricks. As if to help this, the European Commission reiterated again the need – in the form of concrete measures proposed – for a more sustainable public finance. Nevertheless, it could not deny that with the latest measures (actually with the latest but one package of measures – let’s return to that below) the deficit will be under 3% of GDP for the rest of the term of this government. And this is what counts when deciding about the procedure. The latest measures are already the second tranche since the new Minister of the Economy, old-time FIDESZ economic heavyweight Mihály Varga took over – saying in his inauguration address that no further measures are necessary. But a third tranche was also in preparation. This included a tax on publicity revenues of media. Varga said yesterday that it will be introduced only when measures announced before are not sufficient. Today András Giró-Szász, the government spokesman announced that “in the interest of common burden-sharing” it will still be introduced. The statement of Varga – taken into account that the European Commission has initiated infringement proceedings against the sectorial extra taxes already – could be seen as a clever blackmail: if the Commission does not release Hungary, they can be blamed for that tax, if they do, they gave in to save the multinationals from this tax and by threatening them, the government cleverly got out the country from the excessive deficit procedure. The tax will in fact cut further into the profits of the two commercial television channels, one of which, already making losses, is under negotiation to be purchased by the strongest company group which wins almost all public procurements in Hungary and whose owner is the main financial expert around FIDESZ – more exactly, he was treasurer of the party and is expert in party and campaign financing and also owns most of the poster sites in town – which may not be without link to the fact that election publicity is enabled on these posters while prohibited in a number of other commercial media, including commercial tv. No further comment is needed, I assume.

An "example" of press freedom

One of the important opposition on line portals has exhausted its resources and announced that it will suspend and eventually finish its activities. Galamus announced that they are only producing debt since two months and the support received since their first call mid-December was not enough. The portal was radically left-leaning liberal and some associated it with Ferenc Gyurcsány, the ex-prime minister who tried to stop indebtedness with austerity against the resistance from its own party and also the forceful actions of allegedly right-wing FIDESZ, who wanted to explain the people that no austerity is necessary and torpedoed healthcare reform and study fees for universities through a referendum. It is not subject of this post to evaluate his activities and views, but the portal Galamus was not associated with his person and did not operate as the "house media" of his tiny party (he parted the Socialists). An important piece of media freedom is breaking down. This is the second time the portal is in difficulties, readers saved it the first time, and they also introduced a sort of "subscription" although the portal remained open. Thus, apparently, the subscription system did not work. I also sent them a subscription like I am subscribed to another paper, Élet és Irodalom, or in short "ÉS" Life and Literature in English, a clearly liberal, intelligentsia-oriented, high level paper, which offers subscription to its electronic edition (saving paper and being also more affordable), but as there only some articles can be read without subscription, I do not forget to renew it. Back to Galamus: a reader opened the space for "12 angry men" by sending himself 1Mn HUF (about 3 600EUR) - 12 times this amount would cover one year of operation. But smaller amounts from more people can also help. So maybe we will succeed again. I sent some money again and I also call my readers if they can afford to do it: IBAN: HU25-1070-0419-6649-3934-5000-0005 Galamus csoport. There was another magazine, more for the young and cheeky free-thinkers: Magyar Narancs , Hungarian orange. For readers who do not understand Hungarian, as a consolation that they cannot read these papers I explain at least the title. It is clear that in Hungary it is not possible to grow oranges in the open air. The Communist system in the fifties tried this, of course without success. A film A Tanú (The Witness) - made in 1969 but screened onlyn a decade later - has as one of the adventures of the hero to lead the farm where they succeed in producing an orange. Just before presenting it to the big party boss, however, his children ate up this rare delicacy (I think I don't have to explain the political importance of this - Cuba produced oranges which were only good to squeeze out their juice but not to eat directly.) Nad thy put a lemon in its place. When the big boss tried the "orange", the hero could not otherwise but say: this is the Hungarian orange - "a little yellow, a little sour, but ours". Have a nice week-end!

Surprise

I was skiing a couple of weeks ago in Austria. I used the computer in the hall of the hotel. It was subscribed to a content filtering service which classified blog.hu, one of the popular Hungarian blogging sites as pornographic. This would not in itself surprise me, it also had an interface to report errors so I reported that the site certainly has some pornblogs but this is no reason to block the whole site as - plausibly - the different blogs are independent of each other and a number of very good political, cultural and lifestyle blogs can be found on it.
When I wanted to access the site of a left-wing Hungarian weekly, another content filter became active and informed me that based on the frequent occurrence of certain words, this site has been blocked. As this site is in Hungarian, I did not understand it quite. There was no e-mail address or used interface to report errors or to contact them. However, I find this very strange.

Articles in European Voice - MTI bent the truth again

The official Hungarian news agency (you know, the one which is giving away the news for free and thus killed all independent agencies in the country) published that European Voice had an article of the Hungarian minister of foreign affairs justifying government policies and showing how unjust criticism is.
What they forgot is that there were three other articles: one just about the introduction of the infringement procedure by the European Commission , one about the deficit and finally one one from the eastern European correspondent of the Economist . This latter had arguments for both parts, but squarely showed how unjustified the paranoia of the FIDESZ and the government is, in particular the notion that western politicians and journalists are only informed by the liberals and the left in Hungary and have no first hand information (besides confirming that the Economist is not run by the Jews - how could this journalist have this thought, I do not understand - and is not serving the financial oligarchs - he did not think necessary to underline that neither is the Economist left wing, he also told that the two journalists they have in Hungary both speak Hungarian. It can happen, that some of these articles will not be readable without subscription, but I think some will be freely available a week after publication which must be over now.

Hungarian media

After the official TV (and one commercial channel) reported about the mass demonstration the 2nd January, which was on the front pages even in quiet Luxembourg with a picture of empty streets closed by a police line (by putting the camera with its back to the demonstration), it is encouraging to read Neelie Kroes's blog and tweets.

Also the tweets about the mentioned opposition radio station:

Happy new year

Has all been said? I am afraid, almost all has - at least about important issues. But maybe a lot only in Hungarian - although never has been Hungary as much in the news as nowadays. But small things are as annoying as anything: that the "government" tv shows the Krishna community distributing food for the needy and then shows the account number of another foundation (close to the government). The Krishna community, by the way, was illegally established under communism, by an emigree who was smuggled into Hungary in women's clothes. The introduction of a Suzuki (the factory is situated in the community where the ex-mayor from FIDESZ did not want to cede power to the newly elected independent and the FIDESZ group in the communal assembly is making the work of the new mayor impossible) destined for handicapped which is not a special version and eliminating from the interview with the president of the association of the handicapped all criticism he voiced.
A letter from the prime minister to the public servants offering them the possibility to take out a subsidised loan to repay their forex-based credits at a fixed exchange rate, calling the loans forex-covered loans, with further grammatical errors and some further queer statements.
The chief whip of FIDESZ in parliament and mayor of Hungary's most indebted city (who had an equipment on his luxury car bought from public money which blocks police speeding indicators) writing a letter to thee bank who lent in Swiss francs to his ciy threatening with new legislative instruments against them if they do not take over part of their exchange losses.
The serious questions remain: who will stop this amok? And how can this be stopped without causing immense pain to the people of Hungary and without enabling the hard core of the right to show it as foreign intervention against the interest of the Hungarians? The two requirements are actually in contradiction with each-other: the bigger the pain in the country, the smaller the credibility of the present policy and thus the smaller the convincing power of the arguments that it was foreign speculation and intervention which made the "freedom fight" of the government to fail.
So those who want to change, have to tread carefully: search those internal forces - even within FIDESZ - who could stop this (I could not find a politically correct expression here).