Rule of Law

• Hate Speech

The limits of free speech must be defined clearly. We will initiate the necessary amendments to the Penal Code, the Civil Code, and Offence Law.

• Act on the Right to Association

We will initiate a legislative change that would make the Penal Code applicable to members of a disbanded social organization (rather than only to its leaders, as is currently the case). We will initiate a change that will prohibit the founding of new social organizations by formers members and leaders of disbanded organizations.

• Administrative Offices

We will initiate legislative changes protecting citizens and stating the obligations of the authorities.

• Party funding

It is our goal to make each party’s every income and expense, before, during and after the campaign fully transparent. Each income and expense item must be traceable on the party’s website, and the data must be refreshed on a regular basis as determined by legislation.

• The number of Members of Parliament and municipal governments

There should be no more than two hundred Members of Parliament. The number of representatives in municipal governments should be halved.

• Electoral Act

We propose a single-round electoral system without an election threshold, in which the entire country is a single constituency.

• Government structure

We propose the separation of the Ministries of Justice and Interior.

• Rules for conflict of interest

Until the current system of municipal government is changed, presidents of county assemblies and mayors are not allowed to be at the same time Members of Parliament.

• Response to unconstitutional omission to legislate

The President should have the right to dissolve Parliament for an unconstitutional omission to legislate after three years of such omission in the case of legislation changeable by two thirds majority. It should be mandatory for the President to dissolve Parliament if the omission is made for the same time in the case of legislation changeable by simple majority.

• Constitutional Court

The judges of the Constitutional Court should not be re-electable.

• Breach of law by municipal governments

It is necessary to restore the normal functioning of public administration offices, which are the primary and immediate forums for the review of municipal government decisions. If a municipal government persists in unconstitutional conduct despite the public administration office's decision, Parliament should dissolve the representative body. It is important for the regulations to include short and specific deadlines and clear obligations.

• Transparency

We want a fully transparent administration. All offices, institutions and companies operating on public money must make every official document available on the internet except for documents that would violate personality rights, state secrets, and business secrets.

Economic and Social Policy

• Base Rate

We are in favor of lowering of the base rate as much and as fast as possible.

• EU funds

It is necessary to draw down EU funds as quickly as possible and use them for stimulating demand and creating jobs.

• Budget

When preparing the expenditure side of the budget, Parliament must first pass a resolution on an order of priorities. Whatever is at the end of this list will be allocated funds from the remainder.

SZEMA’s order of priorities begins with international and domestic commitments already undertaken, own funds necessary for receiving EU funds, social care for the neediest, education, child  protection, family allowance, health care, Roma integration programs, and funds ensuring the functioning of the courts on a par with European standards.

We have at the low end of our order of priorities the funding of central public administration bodies, Parliament, municipal government bodies, and the parties.

• Early retirement

We consider the early retirement option for the employees of law enforcement organizations unfair and untenable.

• Hungarian Railway

Government subsidies for Hungarian Railway (MÁV) is currently one of the greatest burdens on taxpayers. The company’s business administration is non-transparent, despite the fact that the railway is one of the most important means of public transportation, which is itself a strategic issue. One serious problem is that the subsidies the government pays for the travel of passengers eligible for free tickets are based on unsubstantiated figures quoted by the company. We propose the introduction of a 1% registration fee for all free rail tickets. This will give us the exact figures of those using the railway and those traveling for free.

• Taxes and contributions

We consider the lowering of taxes and contributions already passed in Parliament a step in the right direction.

• We disagree with the current form of property tax, because it is both unfair and impossible to implement.
• We propose to lower the dividend tax rate to 10%.
• We also propose that this should apply to the "freeing" of accrued dividends as well.
  • Tax Advance Payment

We propose tax advance payment obligations to be based on actual revenue and so on real expected profits.

• Solidarity and taxation

Citizens can currently donate 1% of their personal income tax to a public benefit organization and another 1% to a church. We propose raising this to 3% each, limiting the beneficiaries of the second and third percent to one of the following goals:

• Care for the homeless
• Roma educational integration programs, fellowships
• Social care for disadvantaged children
• Operational costs of student housing
• Health care development

We propose a significant tax benefit for those who donate to these goals from their dividends or accrued dividends: if the donation is at least 10% of the dividends, it should be exempt from personal income tax.

• Expanding employment opportunities
• An active mobility program is necessary: if jobs do not go to the unemployed, they need to be brought to the jobs.
  • We propose extending the Start program to the self-employed, to private entrepreneurs in order to allow more people to benefit from this opportunity.
  • We propose the introduction of a Start Travel Card with a 1% registration fee. Its costs could be covered by reallocating funds from the Labor Market Fund currently allocated to the education of the disadvantaged. This would not result in shortage in other areas, since the use of these funds has brought no results so far.
  • We propose relieving temporary work of all contributions up to a monthly income of twenty thousand Forints, except for a daily health care contribution of HUF 150. We propose introducing a 15% tax rate for the part of the income above twenty thousand Forints per month.
  • In all large-scale investments by the state or municipal governments (exceeding the value of 150 million HUF), the construction companies must spend at least 10% of the investment value on employing unemployed people, Romas.
  • In the case of municipal government investments, public service companies that are owned 100% by the municipal government may provide services to their owner without public procurement. We deem it necessary for such local-government-owned companies too to provide the local unemployed with opportunities for work, and we want the law to make this mandatory for them.
  • Flexible work time will only be successfully realized in Hungary after the introduction of 20-40-60-80% work time. This allows not only for 4-6 hour workdays, but also 1-2-3 or 4-day work weeks as well. Burdens on wages need to be proportionate to this.
  • We propose that using the maximum period of childcare allowance and childcare benefit should be conditional on the spouse or partner of the applicant also applying for childcare allowance/benefit for at least one month in the first half of the eligible period of receiving the benefit.
  • We propose moving some of the bodies and background institutions of the ministries to country towns.
  • Instead of the current practice of supporting companies that provide professional training, we need to move to a system of supporting future employers. They should receive the training funds provided they offer jobs to the participants upon successful completion of adult education professional training programs.
  • Supporting the institution of internship is very important. It should be general practice to involve not only vocational school students, but also vocational secondary school, college, and university students in internship programs by the introduction  of practicum semesters.
    • EU funds
    • The institutional system responsible for distributing development funds must be reorganized.
      • · In Hungary local institutions of  regional development, the regions, counties, and micro-regions, which know problems and resources first hand,  play no role in shaping development programs. We need to start planning from the ground up so that we can concentrate on solving local problems. Only a combination of planning from the ground up and a regional distribution of funds can ensure the transparency and simplification of decision-making mechanisms and thereby secure the plannability of obtaining local funds.
      • · Political decision-makers must be excluded from the evaluation of EU  grant applications.  Our goal is to make sure that support for large high-priority projects is determined by standards of necessity and financial rationality rather than short-term political interests. High-priority projects should be subject to social control based on access to information.
      • We propose the reduction of bureaucracy and the administrative burden on applicants (entrepreneurs and nonprofits).
        • Pólus Program must be brought under review.  The costs of the regional centers’ prestige projects significantly exceed the total budget for the Most Disadvantaged Micro-Regions, while their effects are limited to the given town and, to a great extent, they serve political purposes. Funds must be reallocated to stimulating employment, the economy, and transportation access to regional centers.

Roma Integration Program

• We agree with the government-initiated program of employing Romas in the state administration, but we do not consider it sufficient. It would be even more important for people to encounter Roma clerks in municipal governments. A  mandatory quota should be introduced for the employment of Romas in the police.
• There is currently no debt management service in settlements with populations under 40,000. Consequently, in villages and small towns the state criminalizes the same problems it treats as matters of social policy in larger towns. SZEMA considers this distinction to be a constitutional problem.
• The number of those living without electricity is on the rise. The solution to this problem in civilized countries is the installation of card-operated meters providing prepaid service, which is met by the opposition of service providers in Hungary today. For SZEMA, the widespread introduction of prepaid card-operated meters is a touchstone of whether the citizens’ interests or those of large companies are the higher priority for the state.
• We consider supporting Roma enterprises an exceptionally high priority. Professional support, loans, and ongoing consultation are needed. Opportunities for real work and real market success -- rather than unrealistic, contrived communal work projects made up by the authorities -- are the real way out of poverty. Most of our proposals concerning temporary work aim to help Romas in transitioning to the legal labor market.
• In state and municipal government building projects and the building of facilities using EU funds, concerns of equal opportunity are increasingly taken into account. It would be an important step to limit eligibility for EU grants to applicants that have abolished segregation in education and who have a program for supporting minorities. SZEMA works for conditions in which municipal governments have to take this European expectation seriously.
• There are few places where limited kindergarten capacity causes large-scale problems, and in these settlements only a targeted state program of kindergarten building can provide a solution. The circumstances of the next generation are the key to the whole country’s advancement, and children growing up in small disadvantaged villages must not suffer discrimination.
• Thanks to the Roma civil rights movement and pressure from the EU, segregation in schools is now a matter of law. Yet, not once did the supervising authorities revoke the license of any school for separating students and providing inferior education. SZEMA will fight to make the Hungarian state step up against educational discrimination as resolutely as the United States did in the 1960’s.
  • Public service media as well as all other media can play an important role in fighting prejudice. Our proposal and request is that the media should boycott those who ignore the law and the constitution, as is customary in democratic countries. Each television and radio can, of course, freely make up their programs, just as newspapers and online papers freely make up their content. Yet freedom must be accompanied by responsibility: the public sphere gives protection to those who suffer illegality, but should not offer safe haven to hate speech.

Education

• We propose lowering the compulsory attendance age from five to four  years, so that children can be in age-appropriate communities as soon as possible.
• We propose strengthening the educational institutions’ conscious and organized activities aimed at compensating for disadvantages and not in isolated and exceptional ways in one or two kindergartens and schools, but everywhere and as a joint effort with parents. If children belong to a national or ethnic minority, it is extremely important for them to be able to keep their identities and experience their kindergarten or school years without suffering any disadvantage because of their origin. This also requires new attitudes in teacher training that would motivate openness and familiarity with the different backgrounds of children.
• Family allowance should be conditional on school attendance through the age of 18. Each case of non-attendance must be investigated and followed up: with the help of child support services and educational offices it could be found out whether the child would happily attend another school. The responsibility for non-attendance is shared between the family and the teachers. A unilateral attribution of responsibility to parents and the criminalization of parents are untenable.
• To strengthen social relations and control, establishing school boards must be made mandatory in all institutional units. Changes to existing legislation should also strengthen the role of school boards. Moreover, schools -- sports grounds, computer rooms -- must be opened to the entire local community.
• Renewing and strengthening the content of years 5-8 of primary school is key not only to a student’s subsequent career in the educational institutions but to their entire career path. Given the importance of these high-priority goals, it can be argued that the preparatory year of basic language and computer skills should be made available to every student. This year, which is offered by nearly every secondary school and satisfies an existing social demand, is currently part of the early stage of secondary education. The simplest way to make it available to each student would be by expanding primary school to nine years. However, this additional language and computer skills training should not be squeezed into a single year but distributed over the entire period of primary school education.
• Vocational schools should be abolished. At the age of 14-15, students should only choose between institutions where they may pass a maturity exam if they so wish, which would allow for transfers between different types of school. In cases, where there is no doubt a sixteen-year-old student will be unable to pass a maturity exam despite all professional help and development, the possibility of  transfer into vocational training must be ensured.
  • For vocational secondary school students who do not participate in preparatory training for entrance examinations of higher education, an equally structured and funded alternative training should be offered on the basic legal and accounting aspects of farming, enterprise, employment, taxation, bureaucratic procedures, contractual relationships, and public administration, as well as intensive hands-on preparation for their choice of vocational specialization. Vocational training must be in harmony with market demand, which is why we propose in the employment section that future employers should have a more significant role in education.
  • The inspector system should be restored. Educational offices should inspect schools following a predetermined transparent plan rather than sporadically in response to “reporting”.
  • Along with the greater weight given to vocational training, the number of state funded places in higher education should be reduced. It is unreasonable to use public money to finance a deferral of entry into the labor market, while the quality of mass education is declining and a long training time does not necessarily increase the employment chances of university graduates.
    • We propose special bonus points in the university admissions system for more than a year of voluntary charitable activities.

Health Care

• It is necessary to create a new type of institution, a “high level out-patient care system”, a kind of a “mini hospital”, which is more than an out-patient clinic but less than a hospital as we know it today. Small hospitals in the countryside could be transformed into mini hospitals. A hospital today must have internal medicine, surgery, maternity ward, and children’s ward. A mini hospital would only have wards of internal medicine and surgery.
• Co-payment should be introduced, an average of 5%. The government would fully cover the expenses of retired people and recipients of various aids, while active people could deduct costs from their income tax, or could buy a special insurance policy, also deductible from income tax. This technique could encourage channeling ‘gratuity payment’ into specific, legal fees.
• Today anyone can acquire access to the full range of health care, from treatment of flu to organ transplantation for 4500 Forint per month. In 2009 the government has paid that much for inactive people per capita per month, while the National Health Insurance Fund (OEP) spends an average of 10,000 Forint per month on each eligible person. According to the budget proposal, the government would double its contribution in 2010. Generally raising the present 4500 Forint contribution is inevitable.
  • In order for a better transparency all information accumulated at the public healthcare institutions – except for the patient’s personal data – should be entirely transparent and ready for monitoring.

Hungarian Minorities Abroad, Neighborhood Policy

• Helping those resettling to Hungary
  • Hungarians from beyond the borders who come to work or study in Hungary currently enjoy the benefit of easier access to residence permits and citizenship. This, however, means little in practice, because of the slow and convoluted bureaucratic process. The current criteria of eligibility are appropriate; it is primarily the process that needs to be made faster and more efficient. For example, even if someone obtains the necessary papers for a residence permit (investing considerable time and money), he or she must obtain them all over again for citizenship.
    • Foreign nationals earning university degrees or professional diplomas in our country are currently not assisted by Hungary in working or obtaining higher degrees here, that is with reaping the benefits of their knowledge here. It would be worthwhile to establish fellowship and internship programs for them on the German model or extending existing programs to them. Hungarians from beyond the borders could enjoy preferential treatment in this as well, based on the criteria used for citizenship and residence permits.
    • Helping those staying in their homelands

Hungary should primarily support the cultural and educational institutions of Hungarian communities beyond the borders and their keeping of the mother tongue. This requires a system of institutions functioning appropriately, calculably and transparently.

• Dual citizenship

This question can only be raised in a meaningful way after bilateral agreements with the neighboring countries in question, because by international law anyone voluntarily acquiring a new citizenship can be stripped of his or her prior citizenship (exceptions are those who acquire a new citizenship by marriage or family unification or are dual citizens from birth by receiving different citizenships from the two parents).