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600 thousand households were unable to heat their homes last winter, according to the data published by the Hungarian Central Statistical Office. The number of excess winter deaths falls between 2000 and 4000 in Hungary, and it stayed unchanged in the past years. The Hungarian government provided a budget of 850 million HUF in 2011 [...]
Offshore-owned companies can easily win EU tenders due to the lack of monitoring on the state side. Hungarian Development Agency does not investigate the applicants’ background and the Agency’s website does not provide easy searching options to check all the winner entries of a selected company. The complex data that the user should provide for [...]
The one-month-long ‘Hungary does it better’ campaign of the Government costed 256,7 million HUF. The campaign covered all of the biggest online and print news outlets and flooded the country with citylight posters and billboards. The so-called ‘Government-Information’ ads were financed by public funds and ran from 25th March until 30th April 2013. The project [...]
Small investors welcomed the National Development Agency’s decision on providing 2.8 billion HUF non-repayable grant to PannErgy Plc’s subsidiary PannErgy Geothermal Power Plants Ltd, the news was announced on 2 April 2013. The grant covers half of the investment needed for the implementation of PannErgy’s project for the construction of a plant-farming greenhouse complex in [...]
Companies that never generated any revenue and offshore businesses were also among the winners of joint European Union-Hungarian state subsidies, according to the list which was published by the Ministry of National Development in an answer to a written parliamentary question. Running an offshore business is legal but it decreases transparency in governance since the [...]
On 30th April, 2013, in an extraordinary process within 24 hours, the Hungarian Parliament adopted an amendment to the Act CXII of 2011 on the Right of Informational Self-Determination and Freedom of Information. The amendment aimed to restrict citizen’s access to public interest data by not equal to controlling data to the extent and in [...]
A recent amendment to the law on freedom of information (Act CXII of 2011) all but ensures that the Government operates in complete darkness. The amendment is alarming for many reasons. Most crucially, it casts a wide net in banning public access to any information handled by public bodies that may be controlled by, for [...]
On 30 of April, 2013, in an extraordinary process within 24 hours, the Hungarian Parliament adopted an amendment to the Act CXII of 2011 on the Right of Informational Self-Determination and Freedom of Information. The amendment is under the procedure of promulgation, it will be published in a couple of days and will enter into [...]
Atlatszo.hu filed a lawsuit against the company (Erzsébet Utalványforgalmazó és Gazdasági Szolgáltató Kft.) responsible for the distribution of Erzsébet-vouchers in order to make the financial information of the company public. At the first trial hearing the data custodian called into question if the FOI request atlatszo.hu sent them on 30 January 2013 was received. The [...]
In a reply to the written parliamentary question (Hungarian, pdf) of two Jobbik members of Parliament, Minister of National Development Zsuzsa Németh disclosed (Hungarian, pdf) the subsidies provided by the European Regional Development Fund and Hungary to a list of companies. Altogether 3.5 billion Hungarian forints worth of subsidies were provided to the 74 companies [...]
Budapest’s Andrássy boulevard have been a World Heritage Site since more than a decade. The story of Andrássy út 83-85. began 13 years ago, when the Socialist-led local government sold the huge building to a real estate company owned by the israeli businessman Arie Yom Tov. Yom Tov who had strong ties to the local [...]
Since the Media Service Support and Asset Management Fund (MTVA) rejected our requests to disclose their last fiscal year’s budget, atlatszo.hu obtained the data through an insider leak. The documents show how public money was spent on contracts with Fidesz-related media entrepreneurs and failed tv productions. Leaked budget shows that the biggest beneficiaries of the [...]
Two Fidesz-party members of the Hungarian Parliament handed in a draft bill yesterday aiming to restrict existing freedom of information legislation by limiting bulk access to public data for two government bodies, the State Audit Office (ÁSZ) and the Government Control Office (KEHI). The draft bill allows public institutions to deny FOIA requests if they [...]
Based on the example of the White House visitor access records, last summer atlatszo.hu’s journalist Attila Mong filed a FOIA request to the Hungarian Ministry of National Development in order to reveal who visited the office of the Minister Zsuzsa Németh. However, it turns out there are no such records kept in Hungary. Mrs. Németh [...]
Hungarian grassroots student union Hallgatói Hálózat (Student Network) started a blog that curates freedom of information requests related to higher education. The blog, titled Transparent Education, is using atlatszo.hu’s public freedom of information request service KiMitTud to track down the allegations of misuse of funds by university institutions or student governments. The blog’s author Dániel [...]
Fidesz has a long-standing relationship with the Hungarian political-civic faction Hungarian National Council of Transylvania (EMNT) and Hungarian People’s Party of Transylvania (EMNP), led by the well-known Laszlo Tokes. According to a recently spread rumour Fidesz, as a leader of the Hungarian government offers not only moral, but also financial support to the EMNP. This [...]
The head of the National Inspectorate for Environment, Nature and Water (OKTVF), dr. Katalin Szatmári, also known as Mrs. Tolnai, received an award for her work in public administration last year. Despite the fact that Mrs. Tolnai, who formerly was a politician with liberal party SZDSZ, is constantly being held to account in the Parliament [...]
Gábor Szőllősi, member of Hungarian Civil Liberties Union’s Roma Program was attacked and hit several times in a bus stop on 14th March. Szőllősi was called to meet a TV crew to film an interview but it proved to be a trick to get the activist away from his home. Szőllősi’s work as a human [...]
The Hungarian government paid 24 million Hungarian forints for a 49-page expert report (Hungarian, pdf) which was assessing and supporting the plans for the building of the new Ferencváros football stadium. Atlatszo.hu obtained the document through a FOIA request and established that the report was assembled from several texts available online and offline; the unknown [...]
Atlatszo.hu’s new report series is focusing on the status quo of local media outlets in Hungary. This time Atlatszo.hu is looking at the northeastern Hungarian city Miskolc’s panorama with the help of a local journalist László Pusztai (eszakhirnok.com). Before the 1989/1990 transition the media landscape of Borsod county was irregular because in addition to the [...]
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