The news of the fall of József Szájer was about the Hungarian ruling party across Europe; the government, using the emergency mandate, forbade local governments to levy taxes; An average Hungarian lived on 134 thousand forints a month before the crisis. This is the weekly economic summary of hvg.hu.

When József Szájer resigned as Member of the European Parliament last Sunday, citing mental burdens, many of us were guessing what the reason might be, but the fact that he had to flee a party in violation of the ban on rallies with a backpack, according to the police was not enough. they would have guessed.

There have been conjectures as to whether its fall is not willful pressure on the Hungarian government, but there are too many question marks to give a meaningful answer. All of this may even hasten Fidesz’s withdrawal from the European People’s Party, and the assumptions that Fidesz will leave the People’s Party there alone have not been confirmed and will not wait for it to be voted out.

The European Court of Justice must dismiss Hungary’s appeal against the European Parliament, Advocate General Michal Bobek suggests to the panel. The essence of the lawsuit is that the government disputes whether the Sargentini report was indeed voted by a two-thirds majority, and does not justify on this basis that proceedings could have been initiated against Hungary for serious violations of the rule of law.

In any case, the Hungarian government has launched and launched some major legal battles before the European Court of Justice. But as we have shown, these are all political in nature, and in all cases, without exception, the government has failed or is at a loss.

One of the week’s biggest surprises in EU affairs was caused by Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Gowin when he spoke on Thursday about reluctance to freeze the EU budget under certain conditions. However, no government decision has yet been taken on this and Gowin, as the leader of one of the smaller coalition parties, has opposed the veto from the start, so the issue of the veto can still be decided on the basis of Polish domestic political equilibrium.

We spent a terrible week looking at the situation of the coronavirus epidemic. There have never been more deaths than now, and the number of active cases is growing. The government is promising more epidemiological announcements next Monday.

In the meantime, only one decision has become known: with the emergency mandate, the government has prohibited municipalities that are already on the verge of their financial capacity to levy taxes or introduce new taxes. György Gémesi, the president of the Association of Hungarian Local Authorities, told our question that this affects about 2,500 local governments, and it should come as no surprise that the government did not consult with local government associations before the decision. Although Lajos Kósa said the government does not support the abolition of the corporate tax because corporate income will fall during the crisis, it will not solve all of the problems facing cities.

In any case, András Tállai said the government would protect people from raising taxes at local governments, but the secretary of state also added that it was incomprehensible why they wanted to levy taxes at all. Erzsébetváros Mayor Péter Niedermüller has gone furthest among the critics: he claims the decree is unconstitutional, so he will enact the tax increases already decided by the district and await the resolution of the mansion and the constitutional court.

Photo of the week: construction on the Orbán family estate in Hatvanpuszta.

Compared to a year earlier, the performance of the Hungarian economy fell by 4.6 percent in the third quarter of this year, the Central Bureau of Statistics reports. Our economy recovered at a good pace before the second wave of the epidemic hit, up 11.4 percent from the second quarter. The detailed figures show that work in the factories resumed after the spring shock, but transport and storage declined, and the lack of foreign tourists is felt not only by tourism but also by trade.

The CSO also announced this week that the turnover of Hungarian stores is falling, the 1.9 percent drop being worse than the most pessimistic expectation. Apparently in October people only took food and drink and medicine, everything else almost only when they finally had to. However, the situation in the industry can inspire some confidence. By October, it had not only returned to pre-crisis levels but had surpassed it, up 2.7 percent from a year earlier. According to the first data, there was an increase in the production of vehicles and in the production of computers, electronics and optical products, which could help the whole Hungarian economy.

While there were rumors that the Portuguese and Spanish governments in Angola wanted to tap into some Hungarian agricultural business opportunities, our sources say there was no serious agricultural business there. We know that there were in fact political reasons why Viktor Orbán’s trip to Angola was postponed, except thanks to one of the southern countries, but the German lobby. They didn’t have a hard time: from Hungary pushing Marrakesh’s draft declaration in 2018 promising Africa support to Africa, the otherwise openly anti-immigrant Hungarian government could be set up as a xenophobia and a racist.

Indeed, a deal could have been struck with the Angolan electricity supplier. Ende wanted to buy transformers and other accessories from CG Hungary, but that did not happen. This also highlights the failure of the opening of the Hungarian government in the south, at least in Africa. In essence, no deal has yet been struck that could be taken seriously from an economic point of view or that would justify the success of the strategy to open up the South.

The average Hungarian lived on 134 thousand forints per month in 2019, according to the CSO’s Household Living Standards publication. Divided into tenths, we can see that the poorest households lived on HUF 41,000 per month, while the richest households lived on HUF 312,000 per month.

In 2019, with a decrease of 118,000 people, 1,695,000 people were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, 17.7 percent of the total population. The figures also show that the per capita income of singles and childless couples was higher than that of households with children. Large families are lagging behind in terms of income per capita.

Lillafüred’s trout farm supplies 70 percent of Hungarian trout production – the farm’s manager, György Hoitsy, told us about the kind of work behind it. “It’s a bit of slave labor,” he said, after increasing his annual production from one and a half to 60 tons since he started working there in 1982.

This is because trout needs oxygenated, cool water, and although the temperature is roughly from the spring water, the oxygen supply to the water must be increased in several ways.

György Hoitsy also said that drought years are becoming more common, and that in the high average the amount of rainfall is decreasing more and more. While there is no reason for spring water to warm up for now, for example during a heat wave, feeding should be withheld, which also slows down the growth of the fish – even by months.



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