The Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) is selling off some of its properties due to financial difficulties, party president Bertalan Tóth wrote in a letter to members of the party’s National Committee.
The letter obtained by conservative news portal Pesti Srácok said MSZP is selling off all its party offices in settlements where party membership has dropped below 30 and is also selling its Conference Centre located in a prestigious area on the Buda side (right bank of the Danube river) of the Hungarian capital.
After losing the 2010 elections, MSZP saw splinter groups depart and form new parties and its popularity has been on a downward slope for the better part of the last eight years. In the country’s 199-seat single-chamber parliament it only won 15 seats, down from 29 seats at the 2014 elections.
In the letter, Bertalan wrote that after the elections the party’s financial possibilities have been reduced. It still hasn’t paid back the loans for the 2018 electoral campaign and is currently spending most of its budget on its national network of offices and party employees.
But the biggest single chunk of real estate is the Conference Centre in Budapest (pictured above). It was built during the last decade of Communist rule in Hungary and was originally a Marxist-Leninist evening university. It has six floors, a large auditorium and a total area of 6,000 square meters (64,600 sq. ft.). After the regime change, MSZP – heirs to the former Communist Party – became the owners of the building, which is now the only significant real estate item the party still holds.
