Miscellaneous

Although Sunday evening isn't the best time to blog, the last weeks were so full that it is worth reviewing some of the events.
As I write this, the first exit polls are out on the Greek referendum: they predict a narrow win for the "No" while the official data an overwhelming "No". No is no, so what is the difference? Well, an overwhelming "No" would give a much stronger mandate for the government (as counts progress, it seems "No" is over 60% - oh wait, what for?
No one knows (pun not intended). We will see, what the Greek government does - they also had several proposals on the table, the last two or three maybe not so far from the proposal of the Troika - which is off the table but probably would be acceptable for them again.
While we wait to see, let's talk about Hungary (and also about the U.S. Supreme Court). It's Pride weekend, and just before it, the SCOTUS (official abbreviation of the Court) ruled that same-sex couples have a right to marriage. And this stirs waves in Hungary. OK, the decision to save Obamacare by correcting the badly written law is not so relevant, but that Hungarian facebookers totally ignored the other decision (from early June) about a threat on Facebook, is somewhat surprising. A man was writing on Facebook (apparently in a rap poem - according to experts it was disastrously bad) about wanting to see his ex-wife killed. He was condemned by a court, and actually isn't off the hook due to the Supreme Court's verdict. But the verdict reinforced the "clear and present danger" principle. If the husband really wanted to have her wife killed and called others who could do it to do it, he is guilty (my simplistic interpretation). But if he did not really want it (here the "literary" expression comes into play), or it was unrealistic that anybody do it, he is protected by the freedom of speech.
Meanwhile Hungary is receiving almost as many refugees (asylum seekers) as Italy. And the government wants to seal off the Serbian boarder by a big and strong fence, costing 22 bn forints (itself sufficient to feed 14 thousand refugees for a year - although the decision to accept or reject their demand for asylum should be decided within months and a lot of them go further to the west). Let's forget about the money for the fake "National consultation" and the outraging publicity campaign.
What is more important that first a collection was started to counter the government giant poster campaign. The estimated cost was 3 million forints (as compared to a hundred times as much for the government giant posters), but within a week or so, ten times as much was donated by private individuals.
Then real actions started to emerge: groups of volunteers sacrificed their free time to help them, information leaflets were translated and printed (why only by volunteers? - the link is there, you can see what vital information it contains), food, drink (there is a heat wave also in Hungary) clothes, toys for children, medicines, blankets etc. etc. collected. The coordination runs of Facebook, even between groups in different locations to try to warn when a bigger group is due to arrive (they have to travel usually changing at least once but sometimes more - see also the leaflet). But the group is kept closed to exclude those who would only post rude comments (I see them on posts on articles dealing with the problem).
I should close now on an optimistic note - it is heartwarming what these, mostly young people do and tell about the solidarity they encounter - people bringing donations, coming to help, travelling dozens of kilometres to go to help.

Let's carry on - on the EU budget

Everybody likes to get money. But not too many like to give. The masters of the EU (who are, contrary to common belief, still the member states) gave the Union a moderate financial framework (this is how the long term budget is called in EUspeak) and 2014 budget. The negotiations were relatively successful for Hungary - it remains the second-third most supported country in terms of net balance per capita or by share of GDP. So now the Hungarians should be happy, shouldn't they? Well, the EU funds are well "earmarked", at least the area where they could be spent, is defined.You cannot spend European Social Fund money for economic development or infrastructure, only if there is a social benefit, and cohesion funds also have certain goals to be adhered to and also limitations. Rules of spending, documentation and accounting are not so simple. Partly this is due to the conditionality, adherence to which has to be checked. There is, however space for simplification. Increasing the flexibility in using the funds both concerning eligibility criteria and administrative requirements in beneficial but this should be done in a way that the possibility of fraud should be avoided. On the other hand, in spite of the short-term temptations, the real interest of the country is to prevent that EU funds should be used to distort competition as on the long term this means loss to Hungarian competitiveness to richer countries. Hungary is interested in simplification and also in decoupling the EU budget from conjunctural changes and spirit fluctuations between member states, thus also in giving the EU genuine own sources, for example from a future financial transaction tax or energy tax. This has nothing to do with the extraordinary taxes introduced in Hungary and probably would require their abolition which would actually help the Hungarian economy. Work is in progress and finally sme member state control and also mechanisms to equalise temporary fluctuations can be expected. The condition of agreement of the European Parliament to a decreased budget was more flexibility in reassigning funds and also a review to see if increases are necessary. Hungary should carefully follow this review and support an increase in the budget - improvement of economic conditions can be expected and thus more could be made available - benefiting the recipient countries, Hungary among them. Inevitably there will be a question, what the additional funds should be used for. Part of the funds was made available already to the youth employment programme - if more Hungarian regions could benefit from increasing its amount and lowering the threshold where it can be used, it would address a burning problem.

Youth guarantees

There are two European countries, Austria and Finland which guarantee, that if a young person is unemployed for four months, he/she should get a job, traineeship or re-training offer. This is basically different from the public work which is now the favourite job-creating tool of the Hungarian government. On proposal of László Andor , the commissioner for employment, social affairs and inclusion, the new Multiannual Financial Framework will contain a new youth employment initiative (this was the only addition to the proposal of the Commission on the European Council meeting which approved the Council position on the MFF the 8th February (see criticism about the deal and its enthusiastic reception in a Hungarian article ). And these 6 bn euros can also be used to establish this guarantee as the Council agreed the 28th February (see here . It will be used in the regions where youth unemployment is the highest. The youth guarantee initiative also has a Twitter stream. According to estimates by Andor, the programme would cost 20 billion Euros in Europe. This would mean proportionally 50 billion HUF in Hungary. Thus roughly the amount which has been just taken from the universities or less than half of the interest difference between market financing and an IMF loan (by the most conservative estimates). Further information about the Council negotiations on the MFF is available here while the European Parliaments position can be followed here . A third-party report about the presentation of Mr Van Rompuy and the responses to it shows the main controversies.