There will be no more Hungarian cities

According to origo.hu, no Hungarian settlements will get town title, but 23 villages applied for it. The final decision will be made by the President. Among the settlements applying for the town title, 7500 people live in the largest and          just over a thousand in the smallest.

“Magyarszek – The most natural village!” The 1043-people settlement of Baranya defines itself so in its website, which applied for the title of town with 22 other villages this year.

The local authorities had to handed the application for declaration of city until January. The applications are reviewed by a committee of 7 seven members in the first round – the Central Statistical Office, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Municipalities National Association, the Hungarian Village Association, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the representatives of the Prime Minister’s Office participate in the work.

Based on the opinion of board, the Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office proposes to the President, who will decide on this basis.

The preparatory committee has already done with the work, and origo.hu knows none of the 23 settlements would get the town status. There’s just not least because the government amended retroactively the terms of the declaration of town: to obtain the title, the population must reach 10 thousand people. Even Erdokertes, the most-populous applicant only has 7541 people.

The 2011 Local Government Act provides only general terms about the criteria for declaring a city. It says the title of town can be awarded to a municipal government which plays a regional role and its level of development reaches the level of an average city.