“The national consultation has begun; the first questionnaires were delivered to households on Friday”, Minister of State for Government Communication Bence Tuzson from the Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister said at a press conference on Friday.
Mr. Tuzson recalled that the consultation called “Let’s Stop Brussels” includes six questions on national independence. The questions concern keeping the reduction in public utility charges and job creation benefit, letting in the migrants, the freedom to decide on reducing taxes, and regulating the transparency of international organisations and paid activist groups.
With regard to the details, the Minister of State said the question on immigration policy concerns whether Hungary should allow people whose identities we don’t precisely know to freely roam the country.
“People’s opinions are also being asked with relation to whether international organisations that facilitate the migration process should be regulated and punished for such activities, and whether paid activist groups that interfere in internal affairs should be made financially transparent”, he said. “The latter is necessary because this is the only way people can know in whose interests they operate”, he noted.
Mr. Tuzson also told reporters that Hungary is doing well with regard to unemployment and is currently in third place within the European Union, and this is thanks to job creation benefits, which Brussels also wants to ban.
“In addition, they also want to remove our right to determine the rates of taxes, and want to liberalise the energy market, which would mean higher energy prices”, he added.
“Major decisions and struggles await Hungary in the upcoming period, and these battles can only be successfully fought by Hungarian foreign policy if it can feel the support of the country behind it”, the Minister of State said.
If fundamental national spheres of authority are taken away from Hungary, it will not be good for the Hungarian people, and removing the right to determine these financial issues will only serve the interests of multinational companies.
In reply to a question, the Minister of State said that the printing cots of the consultation were 68.1 million forints (EUR 220,000) net, while the postal charges totalled 881.5 million forints (EUR 2.8M) net.
During the press conference, Mr. Tuzson was also asked about the proposed amendment of the Act on Higher Education and the situation of the Central European University (CEU), with regard to which he said that Parliament would decide on Monday whether to place the Bill onto the agenda. “We would like the issue to be resolved as soon as possible”, he added.
“The existing Act on Higher Education already clearly stipulates that only a university that operates abroad can establish a subsidiary institution in Hungary. Based on current law, the CEU is indeed operating illegally in view of the fact that it does not hold courses either in the United States or in Hungary, it merely has a contract with its Hungarian namesake, the Közép-európai Egyetem, which performs its activities instead of the CEU. This is fraud”, the Minster of State declared. In reply to a question concerning whether this then meant that Government Spokesperson Zoltán Kovács had also acquired his degree fraudulently, Mr. Tuzson said students were never at fault in such cases; they have completed university and duly received their diplomas as a result. “However, the university may still have acted fraudulently with regard to acquiring the right to issue the degree”, he added.