Index – Domestic – We’ve run for the Olympics once
At the beginning and middle of the last century, Hungary already had unrealized attempts at organizing the Olympics. However, these were thwarted by World War I and then World War II. We got it in 1920 from Antwerp, but because we were on the side of the losers in the war, the Belgian city eventually got the settlement. The same was true in the 1940s. There were attempts even in 1960, but after that the topic was removed from the agenda for a very long time.
It was not until 2005 that the idea received support again through the Budapest Olympic Movement (BOM). He wanted to apply for the BOM, but no concrete steps were taken other than poisonous border studies, so no application.
Most of the country wanted it
Back in February 2015, Zsolt Borkai, the then chairman of the Hungarian Olympic Committee (MOB), convened an extraordinary general meeting of the organization to decide whether Budapest should apply for the Olympic Games. In the end, a decision was made to recommend Budapest to Hungary to consider hosting the 2024 Five-Ring Games.
The MOB launched a social dialogue about the Olympic Games, and the BOM immediately probed the public, which showed that 60 percent of the population would support it if we applied. The role of the BOM, as a non-political NGO, was to support social dialogue in the context of the Olympics. In June 2015, at the general meeting of the Hungarian Olympic Committee, the participants supported the submission of the letter of intent.
Even at the end of June, István Tarlós, who led the then General Assembly of the Capital, voted for Budapest to bid for the 2024 Olympics, because according to the feasibility study, the event could bring a lot of money to the country. Finally, on July 8, 2015, Budapest and the Hungarian Olympic Committee (MOB) will send a formal letter of intent to host the 2024 Summer Games. The application was withdrawn by the MOB a good two years later.
The Momentum shocked me
The International Olympic Committee had to decide in 2017 who would be given the right to host the 2024 Games. However, at the end of 2016 and in January 2017, a group of young people, the Momentum Movement, registered, stating that Budapest would not host the Olympics, as it would be a terrible burden on the Hungarian economy, and it would not be possible to make reasonable use of the facilities.
Their slogan became NOlimpia. They joined the authenticated referendum initiative, which called for a referendum on the issue of the Olympic Games. It was necessary to collect a signature to force this. Even before the start of the signature collection, he gave an interview to To be transparent the two leaders of the movement, András Fekete-Győr and Anna Orosz. They justified their initiative by saying, “Not for the Olympics, yes for our future!”, Ie they called for more important and necessary investments in the capital.
Katalin Erdélyi submitted the question, which was also certified by the Metropolitan Election Committee, but after that the collection of signatures will not start. There were fears that the government would occupy the issue, and we did not want to leave it at that. We stepped in immediately and we can certainly start collecting signatures in the second half of January
– Fekete-Győr explained why the signature collection campaign is being launched.
In the end, Momentum submitted well over the required 138,000, 266,000 signatures, to the election office. And he did not want to risk a referendum that was doomed to fail, in which the majority of the Budapest government would no longer support the settlement, so he withdrew the announcement of the Olympic Games. On the government side, he blamed the Momentum for the games on the government side because the opposition party successfully held a referendum on the five-ring.
(Cover image: István Huszti / Index)