The Socialists have called on the government to disclose the contents of the Saturday cabinet meeting, also attended by Zoltán Maruzsa, the state secretary for public education, and Péter Horváth, the head of the National Teacher Association. Socialist co-head Ágnes Kunhalmi told an online press conference held in front of the interior ministry on Sunday that the party wanted to know “the prime minister’s views on the protests in the sector and their dire [working] conditions”. She said the protests were fuelled by the low wages and professional issues, but also by “the government’s failure to keep their promise” to raise wages apace with the minimum wage. “Had the prime minister kept his promise to teachers, they would have had an 80% wage hike by now,” she said.
The government is expecting European Union resources to fund wage hikes, but the “issue is one of sovereignty as education is a competency of member states,” she said. “Since the government is not divulging what happened at the cabinet meeting on Saturday, the Socialists are calling on Zoltán Maruzsa and Péter Horváth to tell the public what they told the prime minister,” she said.