Hungary's Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany pledged on Saturday to continue reforms, as riot police pushed anti-government demonstrators from the square outside parliament. Gyurcsany told a conference that reforms of education, pensions and other areas, intended to cut the country's big budget deficit, were urgently needed.
"We need to go ahead quickly, but not in a rush," he said. Near the downtown hotel where he spoke, sidestreets were closed as riot police herded about 100 protesters from parliament square. "There was a situation there which breached the law," police spokesman Tibor Jarmy told HirTv television.
Conservative opposition Fidesz party MPs dismantled barriers outside parliament to reopen the square to demonstrators on Friday. The square was the scene of mass protests last year against Gyurcsany after he admitted in a leaked tape to lying about the state of the budget to win April's parliamentary elections.
After winning the election, Gyurcsany imposed higher taxes and increased energy prices in an attempt to rein in the budget deficit, which at almost 10 percent of gross domestic product is the biggest in the EU.
The barriers were erected on October 23 last year to prevent demonstrators from disrupting celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Hungary's anti-Soviet uprising. Jozsef Szajer, Fidesz Member of European Parliament, told reporters the party might continue its "civic disobedience" actions against the barriers, which it believed were illegal.
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