Meet the youth movement trying to stop Budapest’s Olympic bid

Not everyone in Budapest is excited about the city’s bid for the 2024 Olympics — Hungarian anti-establishment youth movement Momentum has launched a campaign to stop the bid.

Momentum is hoping to trigger a referendum on the issue via a huge signature campaign. Over the next month, volunteers from the movement will collect signatures at 25 locations around Budapest, as well as canvassing door-to-door. If Momentum can obtain 138,000 signatures from Budapest citizens, the referendum question posed would be: “Do you agree that the Municipality of Budapest should withdraw its bid for the organisation of the 2024 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games?”

The Momentum movement’s campaign, called NOlympics (NOlympia in Hungarian), opposes the bid on environmental grounds, and argues that funds allocated to holding the games would be better spent on five crucial areas: public education, public health care, affordable housing, transport and social solidarity programmes.

Other initiatives to hold a referendum on the Olympic bid fell at the first hurdle, failing to gain approval by the National Election Commission — could Momentum’s campaign go all the way?

Source: Hungary Today