The municipality on Tuesday submitted a request for immediate judicial protection over a dispute concerning the solidarity contribution City Hall is required to pay into the central budget.

"Those annually increasing withdrawals from Budapest and every Hungarian settlement put the country’s entire economy at risk," Gergely Karacsony said on social media.

"The aim is to patch up holes in the central budget, but because of reckless spending, graft and the thirst of oligarchs for money, the central budget is getting into worse and worse shape," the mayor said.

If the municipality is not capable to finance public services, international credit rating agencies will downgrade Budapest which will lead to their downgrading the whole country, he added.

As a result Karacsony said that "the interest burden of the indebted state could skyrocket, which could seriously affect the forint exchange rate, the stock markets and the yield on government bonds, and could accelerate capital outflow from Hungary."

"Bleeding out Budapest will ultimately lead to state bankruptcy."

Budapest accounts for 38 percent of Hungary’ GDP, the capital city is the engine of the country’a economy, Karacsony said, insisting that returning the "unlawfully" withdrawn monies was in the interest of not only Budapest, but the whole country.

Alexandra Szentkiralyi, the Fidesz-Christian Democrats group leader in Budapest, said Karacsony had been lying and pointing the finger at others, including the prime minister. Yet, it was him and the opposition Tisza Party that had brought "the country's richest city" to bankruptcy, she added.

She said this year's budget had been purposefully "planned with an unlawful hole" of 50 billion forints (EUR 125m), and then they wasted the same amount on the "Rakosrendezo waste dump" in an irresponsible manner.

DK calls for special session of City Assembly

The Budapest chapter of the opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) has called for the convening of a special closed session of the City Assembly to discuss the situation following the state treasury "withdrawing more than 10 billion forints from Budapest's current account".

DK's group leader in the assembly, Sandor Szaniszlo, told an online press briefing on Friday that urgent measures were needed in light of the "abducted" money, which, he added, belonged to the people of Budapest and financed public transport, nursing homes, homeless care and the city's employees.

He said the capital's public services were in danger of collapsing due to the collection of the central government's so-called solidarity tax.

Source: MTI – Hungary’s national news agency since 1881. While MTI articles are usually factual, some may contain political bias, and readers should be aware that such content does not reflect the position of XpatLoop, which is neutral and independent.

Since the goal of XpatLoop is to keep readers well briefed, right across the spectrum of opinions, MTI items are shared to ensure readers are aware of all the key narratives within the media landscape.

XpatLoop believes in empowering readers to form their own views through complete and comprehensive coverage. To facilitate this XpatLoop has a balanced range of news partners, as you can see when you surf around XpatLoop.com

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