Brussels, 05/01/2011 (Agence Europe) - Hungary, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council of Ministers, has suggested that it might be prepared to amend its controversial law on the media if the European Commission, following legal investigation of the text, were to conclude that it is not in line with Community law or to recommend amendment. An English translation of the new law was sent by the Hungarian government to the Commission on 4 January. “I'm sure that the Commission will do a fair and correct evaluation of the law and make, probably, some comments and recommendations. Let's wait for it and see what kind of remarks and recommendations it will make. Then we can sit down together and see what we can do and what we want to do”, Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi told a group of journalists in Budapest on 5 January. When asked about the chances of the government actually changing the law, the minister was evasive. It was, he said, “premature” to make any comment on this issue. “We are not at that stage yet,” he said. It would be “wise” to await the outcome of the Commission's legal investigation, he added. The minister rejected what he called the “disproportionate” criticism expressed and the “excessive language” used by the international press and the OSCE, and, indeed, by some EU member states on the law on the media “without reading the text” (the English translation only now having been published). “A lot of what has been said has been quite simply wrong,” he said. Hungary is a “vibrant”, though “sometimes aggressive”, democracy. To say that this democracy is at risk because of the new law on the media was “ridiculous”, in his view.
“Crisis tax”. Martonyi also rejected the criticism levelled recently against the new tax legislation adopted by the Hungarian parliament in October of last year, including the infamous “crisis tax”, which, a number of European industrial firms claim, is discriminatory in that it mainly targets the sectors (banking, energy and telecommunications) where foreign companies dominate. “There is no discrimination whatsoever” in this law, Martonyi stated. In all sectors affected by the tax, “the biggest payers are Hungarian companies,” he argued. (H.B./transl.rt)