Budapest - Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany agreed that Hungary needs to adopt the euro as soon as possible after meeting a new alliance of employers and academics on Tuesday. The new Reform Alliance aims to draft a set of reform policy recommendations by late January or early February, announced Jozsef Palinkas, the president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Peter Futo, president of the Confederation of Hungarian Industrialists and Employers, after the meeting.
The group, established on Friday, brings together the heads of nine employers' associations and the president of the Hungarian Chamber of Trade and Industry, as well as leading academics.
Pushing for the fastest possible adoption of the euro, even by 2012, is one the main aims of the Reform Alliance.
It wants to see major reforms to local councils, the civil service, the pension system, the business sphere, and the tax, health and education systems.
Gyurcsany said the government and the Hungarian Socialist Party that he heads see the group as an ally sharing the same aims.
"The objective of the planned reforms is for Hungary to adopt the euro currency early in the next decade and to raise the average wage close to the European level within 10 years," Gyurcsany said after the meeting on Friday.
Gyurcsany said he wanted his government to initiate a "second wave" of reforms once the ongoing debate over the 2009 budget was concluded.
The main points of the budget were voted through parliament last week, and it will be put to the final vote on December 15.
Hungary's main opposition leader, Viktor Orban, was less enthusiastic after his own meeting with the Reform Alliance on Tuesday.
He railed against the government, calling it the worst government in Europe and saying the measures it has taken so far have only worsened Hungary's plight.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel for Hungary," Orban said, "because we are not in a tunnel: we are in a hole."
Unpopular measures such as a freeze on public sector pay and the abolition of traditional "13th month" bonuses, as well as a cap on winter bonuses to pensioners, moved thousands to demonstrate in front of parliament on Saturday.
Trade union leaders are threatening a nationwide strike on January 12 if the government does not back down.
As well as designing policies, the Reform Alliance hopes to cooperate with the media in communicating the need for reforms to an often wary public.
"The aim of reforms is to bring the Hungarian economy, wages and standard of living up the the EU average as quickly as possible, and avoid any further economic backsliding," Palinkas said on Friday.
Gyurcsany welcomed the new group as "one of the most significant professional bodies" to be set up in Hungary in recent years.
