Hungary to keep EU fundings despite rule of law dispute
Hungary could be entitled to the majority of its frozen EU fundings, as despite warnings, the EU won’t be able to retract fundings retroactively.
Hungary has repeatedly violated the European Union’s rule of law requirements, and the European Commission launched its rule of law mechanism to withhold crucial funding from Hungary. However, Die Welt reports that Hungary should be entitled to some part of its EU funds.
What has changed?
In a letter viewed by die Welt, EU Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn has informed German Free Democrat MEP Moritz Körner that, contrary to previous announcements from Brussels, Hungary will not be required to repay EU funds for the period when the rule of law mechanism was supposed to be in place but was not yet implemented.
The reason is that because of the pending decision from the European Court of Justice on the Hungarian-Polish appeal the withholding of funds could only come into force later.
As napi.hu mentions, this could mean that in a sharp turn of events, the European Commission considers it sufficient to freeze “only” EUR 6,3 billion of cohesion funds for Hungary.
European Commission Vice-President Vera Jourová has previously said that not a single cent of Western taxpayers’ money will go to the Hungarian government. She added that all money will be recovered from the Hungarian government in cases where it is proven that subsidies have fallen into the wrong hands. According to Transparency International, Hungary is the most corrupt country in the EU, therefore this would have meant long investigations.
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But the European Commission, which asks Hungary to make changes in its judiciary system in order to follow the EU’s rule of law requirements to receive the frozen funds, has to follow its own rules. This means that the European Commission must accept that punitive measures cannot be applied retroactively. Therefore, the Hungarian government led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán does not have to give up EU funding received since 2021.
German MEP calls out the European Commission
The MEP of the German Free Democrat was not happy with this response and called out the European Commission for complying with corruption in Hungary.
“If they allow Viktor Orbán’s corrupt friends to keep illegally diverted European taxpayers’ money, they are complicit in corruption” – Körner told Die Welt.
As we have previously written, the Hungarian government is required to make more than 17 changes in order to receive all of the frozen funds from the EU.
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