Máté Kocsis, councillor for local government and law enforcement, said the budget path was stable and predictable. The assembly approved almost 15 billion forints of investment projects for the 2017 FINA World Aquatics Championships.

The city will spend 3.5 billion forints to renovate the sewerage and main road on Margaret Island. It will also renovate the section of the embankment road between Kossuth Square, in the centre of the city, and the Dagály baths, where most of the events will take place.

The cost of the project is estimated to be 6.2 billion forints, but the city expects to get 5.6 billion forints in central government support for the investment. The 2016 budget allocates 27.3 billion forints for developments necessary to host the championships.

Opposition parties bemoaned the state of the Budapest municipal budget ahead of a meeting of the assembly. The Socialist Party’s Sándor Szaniszló said the budget is an “open admission that Budapest only receives money [for projects] approved by [PM] Viktor Orbán and his people.”

This year’s Budapest budget perpetuates a shortfall of 85 billion forints (EUR 274m) and it includes cuts of 200 billion forints in comparison to the 2010 budget. “The capital is selling off its marketable assets as if at a garage sale,” he said.

The municipal council’s 2016 budget is tantamount to a “certificate of destitution” because it includes developments in areas only where they are unavoidably necessary, the radical nationalist Jobbik said before the vote. It is unacceptable that spending has been cut in several areas, Marcell Tokody, the party’s representative for Budapest, said, citing a 68.5% cut in support for the environmental protection fund and 25% cut in funding for the Budapest police headquarters.

The opposition PM party said that based on the 2016 budget, years of “indebtedness and a hand-to-mouth existence” are starting in Budapest. Gergely Karácsony, the party’s Budapest representative, said the budget shows that Budapest has been left out of European Union resources for development.

The opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) said that the Budapest budget shows that the city is in crisis. The party’s Budapest representative Erzsebet Gy Németh said that since 2010, the city’s leaders had neglected to create funding for developments.

LMP said that despite continuously using up assets, the municipal council included several unfounded items in this year’s budget such as unrealistically high parking revenue and state support of 12.6 billion forints for suburban transport, when a deal with the central government has not been officially signed.

The Liberal Party called for an investigation into the legality of the budget over the item on the budget’s revenue side for suburban transport, which the party said suggests that it is automatically assumed that the state will take over the financing of Budapest’s suburban transport despite the absence of a formal agreement between the capital and the government.

In reference to the informal agreement between the government and the capital about the future of Budapest’s agglomeration transport, the party said no budget can be planned based on verbal agreements, hence the need for a probe into the budget’s legality.

Fidesz councillor Péter Kovács, the head of the assembly’s budget committee, said the budget’s most important objective is to guarantee the ability to finance public transport services, a goal which he said the budget achieves.

Responding to criticism from the opposition parties that the budget has been constantly shrinking for years, Kovács said the critics fail to take into account the budget’s expenditure side and notice that it is not just revenues but also expenditures that are decreasing, noting the state’s takeover of schools and health institutions.

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