Andras Domani

The Castle Law was supposed to be presented to Parliament next week, but it was removed from the agenda at the Legislative Committee meeting.

Currently, the legislative committee is not dealing with the constitutionality of the Castle Law, so it cannot decide on it in next week's parliament session.

It included the initial agenda proposal and the call for a meeting of the Legislative Committee,

But committee chairman Chappa Hindi began the meeting at 10 a.m. by saying that this point would not be discussed.

He did not add any reasons, did not receive any questions about it, and the shortened agenda was accepted not only by members of the government party, but also by representatives of the opposition.

At the end of 2023, the then President of the Republic, Katalin Novak, sent the law that would have allowed the ownership of various castles to the private sector free of charge, mainly based on the free decision of the Minister of Construction and Transport, for review by the Constitutional Court. Janos Lazar accepted this with indignation, saying of Novak's decision that either cowardice and old communist reactions were behind it, or that the president's lawyers had not read the law. In any case, the Constitutional Court agreed with the then Head of State: that the law “does not specify the general objective that makes the involvement of private capital necessary, but rather necessary” according to the law, that is, the law does not sufficiently justify the transfer of castles into private ownership or the management of assets for free. . It is also full of inaccuracies.

At the end of January, the Speaker of the National Assembly asked the Legislative Committee to prepare the necessary amendments to make the law constitutional. That could have happened on Thursday, but since it was taken off the committee's agenda — perhaps because it was not possible to develop text with majority support — it is now impossible to know when they will return to it.

The timely decision coincides with the fact that Portfolio wrote about the European Commission sending a letter to the Ministry of János Lazar over the construction law, and even the suspension of EU funds is not ruled out. The Ministry was given until the end of April to respond to questions.