Demonstration held against law on teachers’ status in Budapest

Protesters marched from downtown Kalvin Square to the building of the interior ministry chanting slogans such as “The status law is revenge law”, “General strike”, “Pinter resign” referring to the interior minister, and “police state is no rule of law”.

In front of the interior ministry on Roosevelt Square, Erzsebet Nagy of teachers’ union PDSZ called on the government to withdraw the draft, “as it aims not to improve education but to discipline teachers”.

Instead, the government should come up with legislation in line with its commitments to the European Union during negotiations on accessing its recovery and resilience funding, “which would improve public education and money would also flow in”, Nagy said.

Nagy noted that “all the large groups of the European Parliament” had turned to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a letter, asking that the EC put pressure on the government to withdraw the legislation.

After the demonstration in front of the ministry, some demonstrators marched to the prime minister’s office in the Castle District.

The Budapest police headquarters said late on Monday that an unregistered protest had been held at the prime minister’s office where many of the protesters acted aggressively with police who used tear gas against them.

Earlier on Monday, opposition Parbeszed also held a protest in front of the ministry.