Kocsis: Fidesz asks government to maintain credit moratorium

The moratorium must be kept for people in need, but the issue should also be included in the National Consultation public survey, too, Kocsis told a press conference at a Fidesz meeting in Debrecen, in eastern Hungary.

Kocsis said that if Hungary reached a sufficient level of growth, payroll tax cuts could follow, leading to an increase in wages. The government plans to increase the minimum wage for unskilled workers to 200,000 forints (EUR 570) a month and the minimum wage for skilled workers to 260,000 forints a month, he said. Further, the 13th month pension will be reintroduced in full and low-earning parents will receive a personal income tax rebate, he added.

Kocsis said that the pandemic, migration and economic challenges must be faced but Hungary was also in danger of “returning to the past”. He said the leader of the opposition Democratic Coalition, Ferenc Gyurcsany, was “a potential danger” if he regained power.

Kocsis said the former Socialist prime minister was the ringleader of the various opposition forces, while others such as the current mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karacsony, were “bit players”. He insisted that the election would determine whether or not Hungary returned to “blood and violence and the policy of austerity”.

In response to a question, Kocsis said it was “surprising that a law against paedophiles is getting brutally attacked”, adding however that the law had not been discussed at the group meeting. The protection of children is a shared European value, he said, adding that the law was about imposing stricter punishment for paedophelia and protecting children. “Raising children is the job of the parents, and the state’s is to protect children and punish paedophiles,” he said.

In response to another question, the group leader criticised Gyurcsany, calling him “a criminal in an economic and social sense”. He accused Gyurcsany of “pushing the state of affairs in Hungary towards civil war with his rhetoric”.

“There are many who’d be in need of the establishment of an operative board tasked with blocking Ferenc Gyurcsany,” Kocsis said.

Meanwhile, Kocsis dismissed as “an anti-clerical provocation” a proposal by DK lawmaker Agnes Vadai that the seal of confession should be broken in the cases of crimes of paedophilia, saying that over the course of history such laws “have only been proposed by Hitler and Vadai”.