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Category: Current

A NOT TOO ORIGINAL SIN: HUNGARIAN INDEBTEDNESS IN FOREIGN CURRENCY

The context Every third Hungarian family services a loan denominated in foreign currency, predominantly in Swiss francs (CHF), drawn either to buy a house or a car. The whole stock of foreign exchange (FX) household mortgage loans amounted approximately to CHF 22 billion, that is 18 per cent of Hungarian

‘SOMETIMES WE DO REACH CONSENSUS’

The 45-year-old Fidesz politician hails from Veszprém in western Hungary, and trained as a lawyer. He has represented the Veszprém constituency in Parliament since 2006, when he also became leader of the Fidesz Parliamentary faction, then in opposition. In April 2010 he was named Minister of Public Administration and Justice,

RESTITUTION OF HARTED, OR RESTITUTION OF MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING?

On the 2011 Serbian Act on Restitution – from the Angle of History of my Home Town My father and I were born in the same house. (Literally, since in our part of the world, giving birth in hospitals became a common practice only later.) Yet, we were not born

ON MUD AND MIRACLES

The First Anniversary of the Red Sludge Disaster Three colours, green, white, and brown dominate the landscape in the village of Kolontár and the town of Devecser, nearly a year after the disaster. The colours are deeply restful to eyes grown accustomed to the all pervasive red left by the

ON BUSINESS-GOVERNMENT RELATIONS: THE HUNGARIAN CASE

U-Turn in taxing big firms Soon after the change of government in May 2010, the new Parliament voted for a “bank tax” – in fact, a surprisingly high levy on financial sector companies. A second package included a surtax on telecoms, energy and large retail firms (typically foreign owned), as

PUTIN OR MEDVEDEV

Preparing for the 2012 Elections Sergey Brin, one of the two inventors and billionaire owners of Google, the world’s largest Internet company, emigrated from Russia in 1979 at the early age of six. He described his country as “Nigeria with snow, controlled by a bunch of cowboys”. The question is,