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European Union money for village tourism

It was in January 2012 that Viktor Orbán introduced the Ignác Darányi Plan, named after the minister of agriculture between 1895 and 1903 and again between 1906 and 1910. It was a ten-year program financed primarily by the European Union. The aim was to raise the living standards and the quality of life in rural Hungary. The prime minister in his speech couldn’t refrain from his usual hyperbole and told his audience that “Hungary was strong when its agriculture prospered,” which was total nonsense.

From the start, large amounts of money were allocated to the Ignác Darányi Plan. In 2012 and 2013 alone, 300 billion forints were distributed under various categories, among them “rural tourism.” Tourism obviously necessitates providing accommodations for all those domestic and foreign tourists who would like to have a taste of the rural delights of Hungary. Thus, enterprising individuals could apply for grants of 30-50 million forints to build small, family-run hotels. These small hotels with four to six rooms sprang up all over, even in places that rarely saw a tourist. No wonder, because it was a fabulous deal. According to the contract, after five years of running a hotel, the owner of the establishment could close up shop and declare the place to be his private home. Actually, some people decided not to wait for five years. On grant money they built themselves a nice family residence, which not for a moment served as a guesthouse for tourists.

The most notorious case was that of József Mondok, mayor of Izsák, a village of 5,500 inhabitants near Kecskemét. In 2014 he received about 35 million forints to build a hunting lodge in Izsák. Upon investigation, Index found that no one had ever heard of a hunting lodge in Izsák. The so-called hunting lodge was used as Mondok’s family home. And since that business deal was so successful, he decided to build a mini-hotel in the village of Karád, not far from Lake Balaton, where he owns large tracts of land and where his son now lives. That “hotel” was also a family residence, for the younger Mondok.  On the door was a sign claiming that the brand new building was closed to visitors due to renovation. In brief, the two Mondoks, father and son, built themselves two rather posh houses on money from the European Union’s assistance program for “rural Hungary.”

Thanks to Index’s investigation, in November 2017 the public prosecutor of the district of Kecskemét filed a complaint against Mondok and his two sons in the “hunting lodge case.” Mondok apparently has been the powerful “kiskirály,” a local warlord of sorts, in Izsák for the last 20 years. He was above the law, and he didn’t even try to hide his illegal activities. He was sure that his Fidesz friends high above would save him. It took a long time, but eventually Fidesz protection came to an end. Apparently, János Lázár, who had possibly shielded Mondok before, decided that it was time for him to face the music.

The topic of corruption in connection with these EU subsidized rural guesthouses has been in the news again lately, mostly because Index decided to pursue the subject. Index’s Attila Rovó learned that just recently 623 new individuals received smaller or larger amounts to build village guesthouses. There are cases where, in a village of 1,800 inhabitants, 10 such hotels will be built, each receiving 60-80 million forints. Among the recipients are many mayors, government officials, and local Fidesz strongmen. Many of the “hotels” look suspiciously like family houses in suburban settings. These new owners could care less whether the hotel business is profitable; their goal is ownership without any obligation after five years. Apparently, people who actually looked into the opportunity as a true business venture claim that these mini-hotels, by and large, cannot be profitable. Yet applicants abound, and most of them receive the maximum amount of €160,000.

Today an article was published in fuhu.hu about the village of Bócsa, population 1,800, which was described as the Mecca of village tourism. The village already has nine small hotels, but soon enough that number will double because nine more applicants received grants to build guesthouses in the last round of grants. I might add that among these recipients two are relatives of the mayor. The cost of construction has gone up tremendously in Hungary in the last few years, and therefore by now only half of the cost is covered by the grants.

There seem to be few tourist attractions in and around Bócsa. One can admire the sand dunes of Bugac in the Kiskunság National Park, and one can fish in two privately owned man-made ponds nearby. The most spectacular entertainment seems the horsemen of the Vincze Riding School, whose skills, judging from the pictures on the village website, are admirable.

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Grape harvesting festival in Bócsa

Reading these stories is depressing, not so much because a fair number of these grants end up in the hands of Fidesz politicians and their relatives but because these incredible sums are going into mostly useless projects. It’s hard to imagine that Bócsa needs 18 guesthouses; most likely, the current nine are half empty most of the time. The journalist of Index suspects that these so-called entrepreneurs do not really care about the business prospects of their “guesthouses.” They were planning to build a house all along, and now here is the opportunity to save half the cost.

The case of Bócsa’s nine new guesthouses came up yesterday during Gergely Gulyás’s government info. Gulyás, who most likely never heard of Bócsa, suggested looking around the village, saying that skeptics could find plenty of reasons for these additional guesthouses. Although it is hard to imagine that Bócsa is teeming with tourists, the village does seem to be doing its best to attract them. They organize a “gulyás” festival, they have “grape harvest days” during which the enthusiastic inhabitants dress up in folk customs, they have a “zither orchestra,” they organize a “gathering of slaughterers of pigs,” and they have a yearly “ball of the parents.” Occasionally groups of foreign students visit the village. I found one such visit in October 2016, during the village’s “grape harvest days.” The mayor in a fancy light-colored bocskai gave a little speech in English to a group of Americans. That was surely not an ordinary event in the life of the village.

July 25, 2018

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