2025 budget to wait until US election day

A left-wing commentator dismisses the official reason given to explain why next year’s budget will be passed in the autumn, instead of May or June as for the past 9 years.

Gergely Gulyás, the cabinet minister in charge of the Prime Minister’s office announced that the government will not finalise next year’s budget before the US presidential election. Times of peace, he argued, require different economic policies from those dictated by times of war – and, he added, peace would result from Donald Trump’s victory in November.

In Népszava, Zsolt Papp gives no credit to Mr Gulyás’s explanation. Donald Trump could not put an end to the war in Ukraine within a few days even if he is elected, he writes. The next US President will only be sworn in in January and it will take him several months to enact any new policies. By that time, Papp writes, the budget should be well in force. The real reason he sees behind the government’s decision is that the country’s leaders have finally realised the irrationality of adopting the budget six months in advance. In fact, it had to be amended several times over each of the past nine years. The government would have been well advised to admit that, he concludes.