Steven N.Several thousand people gathered on Kossuth Square in front of Parliament at 6:00pm on Wednesday to protest against changes to the KATA tax scheme for small-scale entrepreneurs and sole proprietors.
The law was introduced on Monday and passed by Parliament on Tuesday afternoon. Protests on Tuesday began at 10:00am in Budapest, with hundreds of people that day shutting down a key square in the capital until the evening.
Opposition party Momentum organized Wednesday’s demonstration at Parliament, where party President Ferenc Gelencsér called on Hungarian President Katalin Novák not to sign the new law.
After the hour-long event, part of the crowd stayed at Kossuth Square, while a larger group went to Nyugati Square and shut down traffic there. People in the crowd chanted slogans like “filty Fidesz,” “Get lost, Orbán!” and “We’ve had enough.”
Around 8:00pm, demonstrators began walking on the tram tracks towards Oktogon, and from there to the Fidesz headquarters on Lendvay Street. But as a police cordon blocked entry to the ruling party’s headquarters, the crowd headed back to Oktogon.
At 10:00pm, thousands of people were still in the middle of the road at Blaha Lujza Square and Astoria, with many of them crossing over Erzsébet Bridge into Buda.
By 11:30pm, hundreds of protestors had headed up to the Buda Castle, but their entry to Szent György Square, location of Viktor Orbán’s office in the Carmelite Monastery, was blocked by rows of police and barricades. Although authorities called on the protestors several times to disperse, huge numbers of people remained and chanted phrases such as “Higher pay for the police!” [Telex]
