• Home
• Channel: Current Affairs
• Mayor: Budapest Needs 'Special Rules'

Mayor: Budapest Needs 'Special Rules'

• 18 Apr 2020 7:25 AM
• Hungary Matters

Budapest’s mayor Gergely Karácsony, has said Budapest will need special rules in place to handle the heightened risk to the city’s residents in connection with the novel coronavirus epidemic.

Karácsony said on Facebook that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had raised the need for special rules in the capital, and that he agreed with him.

“There’s a greater risk in large cities everywhere in the world.” “All over the world, information is being sharing between government, municipalities and health authorities,” he added.

Citing Orbán’s pledge to create “the closest cooperation possible” with the municipality, Karácsony said Budapest awaited a “fundamental change in the current state of affairs”.

“Military action plans may be important, but it is time to come up with humanitarian action plans, too,” Karácsony said, adding that “there are mothers, fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbours behind such categories as ‘the infected’ or ‘the dead'”.

Hospital bed numbers mean “doctors, nurses, health and welfare workers that risk their lives to fight for patients and people needing their care”. “Let us not just see figures and statistics but human lives behind them,” he said.

Karácsony also cited the prime minister as saying that the government was examining Austrian practices, and he suggested that Orbán should take the Austrian chancellor’s remark that 15,000 tests should be conducted each day to heart.

The mayor said he agreed with Orbán that the situation in elderly care homes, where a number of people have contracted the virus, called for consequences. The first such consequence should be that the government orders full screening of all residents and staff of all care homes in the country, he said.

He also called for “immediate action” to hold the Budapest government office responsible for “banning the screening of patients before they were released from hospital back into care homes”.

It was “obvious”, he added, that this move had caused the virus to spread widely in those homes.

Karácsony said that the municipality of Budapest has purchased 10,000 rapid tests and ensured laboratory capacities to screen the elderly in homes and social services staff.

MTI Photo: Szilárd Koszticsák

• How does this content make you feel?
• I love it
• I like it
• I dislike it

• Coronavirus Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony

XpatLoop Media Partner

Hungary Matters

Launched in January 2014, this newsletter published on week days covers 'everything you need to know about what’s going on in Hungary and beyond', according to its publisher the state media agency MTI.

Explore More Reports

'Absurd': Charges Proposed Against Budapest Mayor

• 12 Dec 2025 8:03 AM

An investigation into the Budapest Pride march in June has concluded with a recommendation to raise charges, Mayor Gergely Karácsony said on Thursday, adding that he is accused of violating the right of assembly.



Budapest Crisis: Lifeline Loan or Power Grab?

• 11 Dec 2025 6:17 AM

The government's aid loan programme is a "safety belt" for Budapest to ensure that the city remains functional, its employees get paid, and "nobody pockets the money owed to them", Alexandra Szentkirályi, the group leader of the ruling parties in the city assembly, said on Facebook on Monday.



Updated: 'Budapest Will Not Kneel', Says Mayor to Gov't

• 4 Dec 2025 12:00 PM

At a "Budapest Pride March 2.0" rally outside the Carmelite Monastery, the prime minister's office, Gergely Karacsony, the mayor of Budapest, vowed the city would "not kneel", as he handed the City Assembly's resolution on its "real financial crisis" to a government representative.



Budget Crisis Threatens Budapest’s Public Services, City Hall Rejects Insolvency Ultimatum

• 2 Dec 2025 6:15 AM

The financial stability of Budapest is currently at the centre of a fierce political standoff between the City Assembly and the national government. The dispute intensified this week after Mayor Gergely Karácsony and the city administration rejected a government proposal to declare the capital insolvent, an act the government had framed as a prerequisite for offering financial aid.