The Government agrees to prepare the statutory background for the settlement of the country’s communist past, and will complete the job, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at a press conference on Monday, in Budapest.

The Prime Minister told journalists that the Fidesz-KDNP parliamentary faction alliance had adopted a decision regarding the country’s state-party past at its meeting held on Monday morning. Members of Parliament from the governing party alliance requested the Cabinet to prepare by 15 May the legal rules which permit the establishment of the National Remembrance Committee, an organisation dedicated to uncovering the crimes of the communist regime.

Viktor Orbán explained, now that the constitutional foundations have been laid down in the new Fundamental Law „which enable us to process communism as part of our heritage, we are able to also uncover and explore the elements of this heritage that we are not familiar with". The parliamentary faction requested the establishment of a National Remembrance Committee, and urged the Government that the package of legal rules related to the country’s communist heritage be completed before the end of the present legislative session of Parliament. "They requested the Government to create the necessary conditions. I naturally agreed to oblige, and we’ll complete the job”, the Prime Minister said.

It will be the Committee’s duty to identify the leaders of the communist dictatorship and their respective responsibility for the crimes of communism. The Committee must explore the question of „lustration”, in other words, to what extent and how former leaders may participate in public life, while the Committee will also have to enquire into the role of the communist party, the issue of the pensions of former communist leaders, the fate of former party assets and the functioning and operation of the Ministry of the Interior and the law enforcement agencies.

(kormany.hu)