Budapest's 2024 bid could face referendum

BUDAPEST - Hungarian political movement Momentum has collected over 200,000 signatures in its campaign against Budapest's bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, which could be sufficient to force a referendum, daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet reported on Friday. A Momentum spokesman declined comment to Reuters. They will hold a news conference at 1230 GMT. Momentum, launched by a group of students born around 1989 when communism collapsed in Hungary, will finish collecting signatures on Friday after a month-long campaign and submit them to the Budapest election committee. The committee must then rule whether a sufficient number of valid signatures have been collected to call a referendum in the city. Budapest, which alongside Paris and Los Angeles is competing to stage the event, is bidding to become the first Eastern European country to host the Summer Games in the post-Communist era and is hoping to fulfil the International Olympic Committee's Agenda 2020 frugal Games programme.