President János Áder has returned a law to Parliament under which the ownership of central Budapest’s Erzsebet tér would have been transferred from the city to the Hungarian state. Áder said a property transfer cannot be completed without consent from the municipality, and neither the city council nor the mayor of Budapest had been consulted before the bill was tabled. He requested Parliament to repeat the procedure. The Budapest council had expressed its “surprise” that ownership of the square, a central spot in the inner city, should be transferred to the state, and insisted that the body had not been consulted. Under the law, the 2.6-hectare square itself and three adjacent properties would have been transferred on December 15, free of charge. The justification of the law says the square as a public park would thus be handled and operated “in a unified way”.
-
Display
