Budapest mayor slams opposition candidates for 'impossible' pledges

The candidates of the opposition parties for the mayor of Budapest have made campaign pledges that are "impossible to meet", Istvan Tarlos, the incumbent mayor, told public broadcaster M1 on Monday. Tarlos insisted that Olga Kalman, an independent candidate supported by the leftist Democratic Coalition, had set out goals which would cost around 2,000 billion forints (EUR 62bn), adding that those funds "do not exist" in the city's budget. He said that if the pledges of Kalman and Socialist-Parbeszed's Gergely Karacsony were "added up" Budapest could "shut down" financially.