The money had been withheld over Budapest’s breaches of EU law under Viktor Orbán, who had governed the country for 16 consecutive years until losing last month’s general election. The €10.4 billion is part of a post-pandemic recovery fund and only a fraction of the money Hungary is seeking to unfreeze. But with a looming deadline, securing full access to that tranche has become the new government’s top priority.
Magyar’s incoming administration has until Aug. 31 to formally request the money, while the Commission in Brussels has a deadline of Dec. 31 to make the payments.
The country’s foreign minister stressed that Hungary was already working on a set of so-called “super milestones” and reforms that were needed to get access to the money.
“Those are reinstating rule of law criteria. And that’s ensuring that the money is spent transparently, absolutely free of corruption,” she said. “And it’s important to emphasize here that that was our electoral mandate. We were running on a platform. … So these super milestones are 100 percent coinciding with what this government will do, would do anyway, as well as what the electorate was asking us to do.”
The foreign minister also said her government would push for the release of access to €16 billion in European defense loans under the so-called SAFE program, albeit with less time pressure. To secure the money, Budapest would table a new proposal, she said.
“Our SAFE proposal wasn’t accepted by the European Commission. So we inevitably have to table it again,” she said. “So we will see what we can do, again within the framework of what are the real needs of the country, what are the NATO requirements, how fast and how we want to meet those and how we want to get there, as well as what is the Hungarian defense industrial needs.”