Steven N.The Official Gazette has published a government decree signed by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán that gives the cabinet the authority to rewrite the budget without approval from Parliament, citing the wartime state of emergency as justification.
Orbán previously brought up the possibility of rewriting the budget through decrees late last month. As quoted by Népszava, the Prime Minister said, “Since the first of July … there has been one thing or another with the Hungarian and European economy, so we have to adapt the budget to the current situation in the form of creating emergency decrees.”
It was widely speculated that the 2023 draft budget was unsustainable and would have to be reworked by the Orbán government, but since the end of the Socialist system, it has never happened that government decrees overrode the budget law adopted by Parliament.
The newly-published decree states that the provisions of the Act on Public Finance “on the preparation, structure and content of the central budget” shall not be applied to changes in the total amount of income or expenditure of the central budget or to an increase in the budget deficit, but “requirements on transparent and reasonable detailing must be ensured, and that the draft, in accordance with these requirements, fits into the structure of the Act on the Central Budget.” [Népszava]
