{"id":414583,"date":"2024-12-16T17:10:54","date_gmt":"2024-12-16T16:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2024\/12\/16\/ungheria-fondi-congelati-stato-di-diritto\/"},"modified":"2024-12-16T20:04:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-16T19:04:39","slug":"hungary-will-not-get-back-european-funds-frozen-for-rule-of-law-violations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/12\/16\/hungary-will-not-get-back-european-funds-frozen-for-rule-of-law-violations\/","title":{"rendered":"Hungary will not get back European funds frozen for rule of law violations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – No dice: Corrections made by Budapest to safeguard the independence of public bodies<\/strong> (especially universities and related entities) do not convince the European Commission. Therefore, it continues to keep frozen over \u20ac6 billion in EU funds destined for Hungary<\/strong>, believing that the national legislation\u00a0violates<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0EU rules on the protection of the rule of law<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

With a note published today (Dec. 16), the EU executive stated<\/a>\u00a0that it is going its own way and doesn’t deem adequate the guarantees provided by the Magyar government<\/strong>, led by ultranationalist and pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n<\/strong>, regarding the contested regulations on “public interest trusts”<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The case started two years ago when the Council adopted a measure to\u00a0<\/span>avoid violations of the rule of law established in Hungary damaging the financial interests of the Union<\/strong>.<\/span>\u00a0A formula that, in essence, implies the suspension of transfers from Brussels to Budapest<\/strong>\u2014which, incidentally, is currently the only capital city against which a procedure ex <\/i>Article 7 of the Treaty (TEU) is open for violations of the rule of law<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

As a result, 55 per cent of the budget commitments for three different programs<\/strong> under the heading of cohesion policy (for the 2021\u20132027 budget) were suspended for a total of about \u20ac6.3 billion<\/strong>, as well as the Commission was prohibited from entering into new financial commitments with the aforementioned trusts and the entities they manage.<\/p>\n

The areas affected by that decision were mainly public procurement<\/strong>, criminal prosecution, conflict of interest law<\/strong>, combating corruption<\/strong> and, precisely, public interest trusts<\/strong>. Specifically, with regard to the latter, the issue is that of the presence on the boards<\/strong> of universities, research institutes and foundations of personnel close to Fidesz<\/i><\/strong>, the governing party that is effectively a machine for maintaining Orb\u00e1n’s power, with obvious problems of transparency and conflicts of interest between politics and academia.<\/p>\n

On 2 December, Budapest tried to patch up the situation\u00a0by notifying the Commission of the adoption of an amendment to the law regulating conflicts of interest<\/strong>, which was supposed to reduce the risks flagged by Brussels. But the Commission responded in spades because, it says, the Magyar executive’s assurances are not enough<\/strong>, and the risk remains that trusts and related entities remain subject to undue political control.<\/p>\n

So, the Berlaymont today confirmed its earlier decision: in order to protect the EU budget from embezzlement, the so-called conditionality mechanism remains in place and will prevent Hungary from accessing the EU funds <\/strong>in question. After all, the statement says, the EU executive “clearly indicated the adjustments needed to adequately remedy” the critical issues identified two years ago.<\/p>\n

Further funds remain locked up as part of payments from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP)<\/strong> for post-pandemic recovery, which likewise will remain in mothballs until Budapest takes steps to restore the rule of law<\/strong>\u00a0that has been battered by Orb\u00e1n for nearly a decade, to the point of making<\/a> the Central European country “a real systemic problem<\/strong>” in this area (as said by former EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders<\/strong>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Budapest had tried to convince the EU Commission of reforms to conflict-of-interest legislation in an attempt to unlock several billion whose disbursement the EU executive had suspended precisely because of fears that Hungarian rules would harm the Union’s financial interests. But Brussels responds in spades and will not release cohesion funds<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7876,"featured_media":414551,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[25835,25833,27378,26302,30023],"class_list":["post-414583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-viktor-orban-en","tag-funds-en","tag-state-of-right-en","tag-conditionality-state-of-law-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7876"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414583"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":414627,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414583\/revisions\/414627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}