Budapest Expects EU To Decide On Unfreezing Hungarian Funds On November 30 - Orban

Budapest Expects EU to Decide on Unfreezing Hungarian Funds on November 30 - Orban

BUDAPEST (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th November, 2022) Budapest has fulfilled the entire list of requirements agreed with the European Commission, so it expects that a decision will be made to unfreeze the Hungarian part from EU funds at the Commission's meeting on November 30, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday.

"All obstacles between the EU Commission and Hungary that have so far hindered the achievement of an agreement have been eliminated... We fulfilled everything that we took upon ourselves and agreed on. Now it is expected that the decision will be made at a meeting of the EU Commission on November 30," Orban was quoted as saying by Hungarian news agency MTI following a high-level meeting of the Visegrad Group.

The prime minister clarified that Hungary and the Commission previously agreed on a package of 17 clauses, and that Budapest elaborated and implemented all the requirements.

In addition, Orban stressed that Hungary sees the future European Parliament as elected not by direct voting, but on the basis of national delegations.

The conditionality regime, which came into force in January 2021, is a tool to protect EU funds from being misused by member states that do not adequately uphold the rule of law.

It works by withholding EU funding from delinquent states.

Hungary is the first country to have fallen foul of this mechanism. In April 2022, the EU Commission raised concerns about systematic irregularities in public procurement, insufficiencies in addressing conflict of interest, weaknesses in the effective pursuit of investigations in cases involving union funds, and shortcomings in Hungary's anti-corruption practices.

The Hungarian authorities then committed to 17 remedial measures. However, the Commission decided to see what the concrete changes would amount to, and proposed a suspension of 65% of the commitments under cohesion policy, amounting to an estimated 7.5 billion Euros, if all the measures Hungary had committed to were not implemented by November 19.

On October 3, the Hungarian parliament voted in favor of 17 amendments to the law regulating the responsibility of officials for bribery.