Half of the government’s recently unveiled HUF 400bn fiscal improvement package would not be necessary if the European Union were not forcing it on Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in an interview on public radio.
Hungary is doing what Brussels expects of the country, Mr Orban said. But he added that the state of the Hungarian economy would be better next year than is thought in the EU and suggested this could allow the fiscal improvement package to be tweaked. „It remains to be seen which things Brussels rules out now or wants us to rule out that we will actually act on. But we do not have to report this now, only in the first half of the year,” he said. Mr Orban cited as an example of such a measure a plan to postpone an increase in teachers’ pay until January 2014. He said he saw a chance for numbers in the first half to allow the pay rise in September 2013.