In Túristvándi everything was built with EU funding, yet nothing is working

It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that the number of closed buildings per capita in Túristvándi, on the Ukrainian border, is two. Yet the municipality and individuals – mainly relatives of former mayors – have won tens of millions of forints in EU funding for improvements in the village. However, the investments did not go well: the new kindergarten and the market, for example, never opened, but the meat factory and a restaurant also closed after a short period of operation. The former mayor refused to give information on the projects, and the new mayor has not yet been allowed to look at the paperwork.

“- What’s this building?- It’s a meat factory, but it closed down years ago. – That was a restaurant, and it closed a few years ago. – And that building? – Well, that would be a guest house… – Let me guess, it’s closed. – Yes.” – That’s the conversation between us and a local in Túristvándi in April this year. The investments were all EU/state-funded, but they no longer fulfil their original functions.

The village of Túristvándi with 666 inhabitants is located in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county. Since 1996, members of the Lakatos family have held the mayor’s office: between 1996 and 2013, Magdolna Lakatosné Sira was the mayor of the village as an independent, and from 2014, Tibor Lakatos (Fidesz-KDNP), one of her five children, was the mayor. According to press reports, the village market was built around this time. The investment received 39 million HUF from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development around 2008-2009. According to locals, the market building has never opened and was still standing shuttered when we visited.

The closed market building in Túristvándi, on the edge of the village

In 2012, Tibor Lakatos won a HUF 20 million grant to build the “Molnár Csárda”. No Molnár Csárda on the site, but we found Molnár Inn – on Facebook. The page says the restaurant was still open in 2019 but has not been updated since.

The closed building of the Molnár Inn

Gergely Lakatos won HUF 30 million to build the “Mill Inn”. The inn has been built, and according to its website, it was still operating in 2016 with five rooms. However, there is no sign of its original function anymore, the building looks like a family house.

The Mill Inn – there is nothing to indicate that it is a guest house

There was also an Old Mill Inn in Túristvándi, at 21 Kölcsey Street, but there is no sign on either the 2012 or the 2021 Google Maps image indicating that it was built with grant money and that it is not a family house. However, the contact person given at the inn was the former mayor, who won a HUF 9 million grant to build a village inn in 2005. Now, according to the website of the Túristvándi Folk High School, the owner is Magdolna Karaova, although the e-mail address given as contact is still the same.

Géza Miklós Lakatos received a grant of HUF 14.9 million for a meat product demonstration site around 2011 – presumably, the funding was used to build the facility, which is located next to the former Molnár Inn and the former Mill Inn guesthouse. According to locals, the meat plant was in operation for a while, but then closed and has been vacant ever since.

The meat plant – behind it the guest house on the left and the restaurant on the right

We wanted to get the details of the projects from the mayor of the municipality, Tibor Lakatos, but he said he did not wish to answer.

Bankrupt village hopes for state help

The June elections then brought a turnaround in the municipality. Surprisingly, this time it was not a member of the Lakatos family, but a former policeman, Máté Karmacsi, who ran as an independent, who became the new mayor of the village.

Máté Karmacsi, the new mayor

Máté Karmacsi, however, said that he does not know the details of the tenders yet, as he has not had the opportunity to look at the documents. However, he can already see that Túristvándi is facing serious financial problems, and this is probably not unrelated to the poorly managed investments.

“There is a debt action against the municipality, which may be linked to these tenders. But we don’t know exactly where things went wrong. Those who were involved in the construction of these projects also have claims.

We are facing large deficits, and it is almost impossible to finance these from our resources.

We will only be able to do this if we get some support from above,” says Karmacsi.

He added, however, that there are other unfinished projects in the village. One is a kindergarten that has been empty for about six years (no trace of EU funding was found), and another is a greenhouse started under the public works programme, which is also empty at the moment – or rather, weeds are growing in it.

In addition, there is in principle another EU investment, only part of which concerns the municipality. Exactly how much is not known, nor is it known what exactly was built in Túristvándi out of the HUF 1.3 billion development

The new kindergarten building, where children have not been able to move for years.

Translated by Zita Szopkó. The original, Hungarian version of this story was written by Eszter Katus and can be found here.