Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said the government trusts that Ferenc Liszt International Airport will once again be majority-owned by the state within the next few days.
Simultaneously, the government will soon decide on transport infrastructure to and from the airport, the prime minister said in parliament, answering a question about a proposed rail shuttle. The national economy ministry recently said the procedure to repurchase the airport was on schedule and the transaction in its final phase, calling the deal “by far the largest transaction since post-communist transformation” and “a complex task”. Meanwhile, asked by LMP lawmaker Máté Kanász-Nagy about developments in Budapest, PM Orbán dismissed the charge that the central government was deliberately “punishing” the capital. PM Orbán said the Fidesz-run Budapest administration had taken over 280 billion forints in debt in 2010-11, yet 4,000 billion forints had been spent on developments in recent years. The prime minister said he “loved” the city and its people, “but the country isn’t only composed of Budapest”. He added that Budapest had benefitted from hundreds of billions of forints of state money, which he called a disproportionate amount compared with other parts of the country.