Fidesz politician calls EU post-2027 budget “pro-Ukrainian” – UPDATED🔄
Hungary wants the European Commission to withdraw its “pro-Ukrainian” 2028-2034 draft budget and put forward a 7-year budget framework “that serves the interests of European citizens, European families, European businesses and European farmers”, MEP Tamás Deutsch told Hungarian journalists in Brussels on Wednesday.
The head of the Fidesz-Christian Democrat EP group said the commission’s budget proposal was “weak even as a basis for negotiations”. He said the draft budget lacked clarity, but it was certain that the proposals would push up inflation and the debt burden.
Also, the Brussels bureaucracy would be the prime winner of the budget, while another would be Ukraine, he said, adding that at least 100 billion euros was slated for Ukraine and the commission “to finance the war in Ukraine”.
The big losers would be farmers, European regions and European businesses, he declared. “The losers are also those who support the sovereignty of member states,” he said, insisting that the commission wanted to deprive governments and sovereign decision-makers of their influence and massively boost financing for civil society organisations “that constantly attack” the sovereignty of member states.
Meanwhile, European citizens would suffer because the budget was designed to encourage and reward illegal migration, “which poses the greatest threat to their everyday security”. The chapter on competitiveness merely paid lip service to the concept, he said, while existing poorly designed programmes would be further pursued, destroying European economic competitiveness in the process.
Deutsch insisted the budget proposal would beef up the powers of the commission as an “imperial centre”. He called on the EC to “withdraw this weak … extremely pro-Ukrainian” proposal and submit a budget “that serves peace, the competitiveness of the European economy, the reduction of illegal migration, the protection of borders, and the prosperity of European citizens” in the post-2028 period.
UPDATE: Orbán calls on Brussels to withdraw ‘pro-Ukrainian’ draft budget
Brussels must immediately withdraw its “pro-Ukrainian” draft budget, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Facebook on Wednesday. In a video, Orbán said the cabinet had heard briefings from Agriculture Minister István Nagy and EU Affairs Minister János Bóka at its meeting earlier today.
“We discussed Brussels’s proposal,” the prime minister said. “This is a seven-year draft budget, and the picture that’s unfolding is graver than we imagined.” He noted that Hungarian farmers staged a demonstration against Brussels’s plans in front of the European Council’s representation in Budapest on Wednesday.
“Brussels’s proposal can be summed up as a pro-Ukrainian budget whose aim is crystal clear: they want to take Europeans’ money [and give it] to Ukraine,” Orbán said.
He said the plan was “weak even as a basis for negotiations”, adding that Hungary recommended that the EC withdraw the draft budget and prepare a new one “which serves the interests of the European people and European farmers rather than those of [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky and Ukraine”.
“Brussels must be stopped,” Orbán declared.
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