According to Minister of State Bence Rétvári, a cheaper and more transparent system will come to be with halving the number of parliamentary representatives and changing contrariety rules. He spoke about the upcoming changes at the press conference today.

The Minister of State evaluated these changes that parliamentary work would be of a higher standard and the lesser amount of representatives with lowered expenses would mean lesser costs for citizens. Mr Rétvári remarked that as the Fundamental Law of Hungary states, no more than 200 representatives are allowed to take seats in the newly assembling Hungarian Parliament. Coming from this, voters of this year’s elections may send 199 members to the Parliament. He added, the current strength of the Parliament is bigger than in most other member countries of the European Union based on the proportion of representatives compared to the population. As Mr Rétvári pointed out, there has been an overwhelming agreement on a smaller House of Representatives, and yet no decision was made. Socialists and liberals merely took it as a “popular pledge”, but they did not care about the issue seriously and during their administration they allowed mayors and municipality officials to take parliamentary seats.

The current cabinet started saving off on itself, on the municipality elections they elected less large city councils and the number of representatives changed from 28 000 to 19 000.  The Minister of State reminded they highly tightened the laws; no one can be a MP now who bears an office as a mayor or a member of the municipality board. He emphasized that neither county state deputies nor leaders of regional district  offices can be representatives in the Parliament either. He remarked that the political pluralism (mean that one could get payment for being a parliamentary and municipality representative as well as a mayor) has ended. He pointed out that representatives of the new Parliament would be able to put more focus on parliamentary work, so MPs are going to be professional and different sectorial and regional interests, so as ends of specific professional groups will influence parliamentary life to a lesser extent. He said, around 50 per cent of the representative wages can be saved this way plus with the transformation of the system of expenses, spending is going to be cut. Also, he called it an important change that regarding party funding, the cost ceiling in campaign years has been raised from one million to a five million HUF limit per candidates who were able to get the necessary amount of support, also who reach the 2 per cent parliamentary threshold won’t have to pay the sum back. He remarked, that even though reckoning is mandatory for everyone.

(Ministry of Public Administration and Justice)