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Weekly government press briefing about school system, a claim made by German daily Bild, Pest county developments
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Budapest, June 2 (MTI) – Government office chief János Lázár rejected a claim made by German daily Bild that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had deliberately misled the Austrian and German chancellors about Hungary’s migrant situation last year. Lázár said the government’s decision to put public schools completely under state control was final. The government has decided to allocate 80 billion forints (EUR 255.6m) in development funds for Pest county until 2021 to offset the county’s ineligibility for EU funds, he said.
Government rejects claim Orban misled German, Austrian chancellors on migrant situation
The German paper said on Wednesday that Germany had expected to receive a few thousand migrants last September compared with the 20,000 that ended up on its border. The article cited Austrian officials as saying that Orbán had played down the extent of the presence of migrants in Hungary.
Lázár told a government press conference that it was inconceivable that Orbán would provide false information to allies as important as the Austrian and German chancellors.
The prime minister had been in regular contact at the time with both Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann and German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the migrant situation, Lázár said.
Most of the migrants who entered Hungary and camped out at Budapest’s Keleti railway station went there after Merkel’s announcement that Germany would welcome refugees, he said. The big mistake had been Merkel’s announcement, Lázár insisted.
Government decision on state management of schools final
The government will not make any exceptions with any district or municipality on the issue, regardless of how well they may be running their schools, Lázár told a regular government news conference. The government has to take into consideration the country as a whole, he added.
He said the previous system under which local councils ran the basic upkeep of about half of the country’s schools with the state-run schools agency managing major aspects such as teachers’ salaries and the curriculum, had bankrupted local councils. International surveys indicated that student performance was also deteriorating under that system, he said.
Under the new education system, the state will be responsible for school management both in a professional and political sense, Lazar added.
Government to earmark EUR 255.6m for Pest county developments
Lázár told that the decision was made at Monday’s cabinet meeting.
The meeting also touched on plans for how to invest government revenues from farmland auctions. Lázár said the government considers the construction of industrial parks an important social policy goal, and will decide on their funding at Friday’s meeting.
How dare the Germans suggest that the Hungarians are responsible for the level of immigration from last year onwards, they obviously have very short attention spans or they believe in the UK political referendum that you can lie your way out of any problem however dire.
I seem to recall some German politician called Mrs Merkle made a public announcement offering 1 million homes in Germany complete with welfare and jobs to all immigrants who arrived in Germany. Was she not the Leader of Germany?, was it not she who made this offer?. Did she not think of the consequences of this mad offer that she would bring all the worlds poor and unemployed to the gates of Europe seeking to avail themselves of her rash offer?.
This was the EU’s plan A, there is no plan B as they the politicians cannot think one up.