Hungarian PM Gyurcsány defends budget controls

"Sometimes we have to protect ourselves from ourselves," Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány observed in an interview with the Financial Times (FT) on Monday. He was explaining why he submitted legislation on budgetary discipline to the Parliament last weekend.

The new public finance package entails modifications of the Constitution and would establish a Parliamentary Budget Office to ensure that state spending does not exceed revenue. The FT called the "draconian" proposals the toughest of their kind in Europe.

Legal controls may not necessarily be effective, observed Gabriel Stein of the London-based Lombard Street Research Institute, as "once politicians are constrained by law from doing something one way, they find another way of doing it."

The above story is just one of more than two dozen published today by Hungary Around the Clock, the most comprehensive source of daily English-language news about Hungary. For a free trial of HATC, click here. Hungarian news sources include Népszabadság; Magyar Hírlap; Világgazdaság; Napi Gazdaság; Magyar Nemzet; Népszava; Kossuth Rádió news and Hungarian television's nightly news broadcast.

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