One of the promises of Péter Magyar’s new party was to quickly recover the funds that the EU is withholding from Hungary, for example 13 billion euros from the Recovery Plan. However, you have already mentioned the so-called Polish lesson in this matter, where the reform efforts of the pro-European government were quickly thwarted by the right-wing conservative president – after the funds from the EU had already been disbursed. What exactly does the new government have to do to ensure that the EU releases these funds and that it does not happen too quickly, as happened in Poland?
Simply put, we need to ensure that the money reaches the Hungarians and does not continue to perish in Orbán’s corrupt system. Given the mafia state that has been built there for 16 years, we have to guarantee that this system will no longer work.
This will not happen overnight. We need independent prosecutors, independent judges and functioning anti-corruption bodies. So there are a few things that need to be done.
I think that the entire European Parliament wants this money to go to the Hungarians. The campaign showed the deplorable state of schools, hospitals and public infrastructure. We want it to be fixed with the help of EU funds, but we don’t want additional money to go to Orbán’s son-in-law, his father or childhood friends. This has to change.
Has Péter Magyar already indicated how to achieve this by, for example, calling on the Hungarian president to resign?
The new leadership has already made several promises, such as joining the European Public Prosecutor’s Office or justice reforms, which I consider good. Now they also have the mandate and power to carry out such things. For someone who has been dedicated to the rule of law in Hungary for many years, it was an incredibly powerful moment when I stood in Budapest on election night and Péter Magyar announced to the crowd in his victory speech that he would join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Tens of thousands of people cheered and chanted “Europe, Europe”. In most other EU member states, people don’t even really know what the European Public Prosecutor’s Office actually is. The fact that Hungarians know this speaks for itself.
But we need to see some reforms, as you mentioned, compared to Poland. There basically all procedures – the process according to Article 7 (deprivation of voting rights, editor’s note) also the retention of frozen money – they stopped and the funds were released roughly three months after the new government took office. Although the new Polish government completely stopped attacks on prosecutors and judges and joined the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, from a legal point of view the dysfunctional National Judicial Council and supreme courts could not be fixed. The President for the PiS party did not sign any laws regarding these reforms. I think we should not repeat this again.
So do you think that the process of refunding money to the Hungarians could take longer, not just one year, for example?
I don’t know exactly how long it will take, but I think some things will happen very quickly. I am a big supporter of the so-called phased approach. In total, there are approximately 36 billion euros frozen or not yet approved. There is no way Hungary can absorb that amount of money in a day or even a year. These are funds intended for the following years. Therefore, I think that every time they deliver some building element from the necessary reforms, we can unfreeze part of the funding. When they add more modifications, more money can be used.
In the context of Viktor Orbán, a frequent topic was the right of veto, which he, but not only him, very often used in some places to blackmail other countries. Do you think it is time to abolish this right, so that one person cannot block the whole process, for example, when approving a loan for Ukraine?
With Viktor Orbán, we have seen that the right of veto has turned into something that was originally not expected at all. When the European Union was founded, the veto served to protect little Luxembourg from big Germany, Italy or France, to allow them to defend their national interests and ensure that they were heard in the debate. Today there are no longer six of us, there are twenty-seven of us.
We saw how Orbán turned the veto into a weapon used to blackmail and paralyze the European Union. Basically, he turned it into a security risk for Ukraine, but also for all of us in Europe. We must ensure that this never happens again and that no single person has the opportunity to blackmail us and block the entire Union. So yes, I think we should take this opportunity to repeal the veto.
Do you feel like there is even a willingness to discuss it?
Whether we move to qualified majority voting, or whether we require a four-fifths majority on certain topics, all of that needs to be discussed. There are certainly areas where you want to have almost everyone on the same page, but it shouldn’t happen that one person blocks everyone. Now the biggest veto user is leaving, but we know that we have elections in Poland and France. If we want to make sure that we don’t get another Orbán, now is the right time to act.
However, I am more concerned that there is a huge relief among the governments that we have survived Orbán, but so far I do not see a willingness to move forward on this matter. By the end, they were very desperate for him. With all the revelations that he was basically selling his veto to Vladimir Putin, I really hope that everyone understands what a huge threat this is to all of us and that we cannot continue to operate like this.
We talked about Hungary, now let’s move on to Slovakia. In some respects, Prime Minister Robert Fico is copying Viktor Orbán’s strategy – for example, by abolishing the special prosecutor’s office or exerting pressure on institutions and the media. However, some feel that it does it much faster. Do you think Slovakia could be a bigger problem now than Hungary was a few years ago?
Under Orbán, the European Union basically ignored this problem for a decade. He was elected in 2010, Parliament triggered the Article 7 procedure in 2018, and the funds were not frozen until the end of 2022, twelve years after the start of his rule. It is clear to me that we should never make the same mistake again and wait so long until the freedom of the media is basically abolished and the rule of law or democracy is destroyed.
For this reason, I am putting to the vote the report on the discharge of the European Commission, in which the European Parliament requests for the first time ever to start a conditionality procedure against Slovakia. The reason for this is the abolition of the special prosecutor’s office, the actions against the National Criminal Agency (NAKA) and changes in the Criminal Code, as a result of which many corrupt people who were already in prison were released. EU funds are at risk in Slovakia. We have seen all those cases of so-called haciendas, but also many other examples of corruption. We must ensure that we intervene before the situation worsens.
At the same time, I want to send a very clear message to Slovak citizens: look at the deplorable economic results achieved by Orbán. Look at how basically every neighboring country has overtaken Hungary and how disastrous the Hungarian hospitals, schools, roads and infrastructure are. It is clear to us in the European Parliament, and I hope that it is also clear to the majority of Slovaks, that this is not the path they should want to take.
Watch Freund’s video from Slovak “haciendas”:
Did you talk about this report of yours with Slovak MEPs?
I am in close contact with many Slovak colleagues. They generally support it, but at the same time they realize that it is a sensitive topic in the national context. I know that many of them will not vote for this particular passage in the report, but they have made it clear in their own political factions that their groups should support it.
It is especially sensitive in an environment where you cannot communicate openly and where propaganda and misinformation operate. We do not want to harm Slovak citizens or deprive them of this money. However, we want to ensure that millions from European funds no longer flow to the luxurious villas of friends and political allies of government officials.
Do you think it is realistic that the funds would be frozen in the near future, for example during this or next year?
That depends on the Slovak government. This procedure works so that at the beginning there is an exchange of views with the government and reforms are agreed upon. If the Slovak government fulfills them, stops threatening EU funds and ensures functioning supervision and anti-corruption authorities, no money will be frozen.
And if he doesn’t fulfill them?
The money will be frozen. It won’t happen overnight, the process is quite lengthy. Once the Commission starts the procedure, it takes many months. Currently, Parliament is asking for this process to begin. It does not automatically mean that the Commission will follow Parliament’s recommendation tomorrow. But we have seen in the past that the Parliament can create the necessary pressure to see these things through to the end.
We hope that the Commission will hear our message clearly and distinctly and that it will not take as long as in the case of Hungary, where we basically had to sue it and threaten it with a vote of no confidence. I hope that this time we will not have to resort to such measures.
I understand that, according to you, the European Union reacted very slowly to Hungary’s actions in the past decade. Do you believe that now it will really change and react more quickly and strictly?
Time will tell, but I definitely feel the need not to repeat the mistakes we made in the past. The freezing of funds under the conditionality mechanism means that these funds do not disappear, they are only held until the necessary reforms are implemented. It is essentially a preventive tool that should not be used until democracy, the rule of law and freedom of the media have already been destroyed. His job is to prevent that from ever happening.
In the case of Hungary, we proceeded differently because we were too slow and reacted too late. I hope that this mistake will not be repeated and that in other cases, as is the case with Slovakia, we can be faster and limit the damage done.
You mentioned the hacienda cases before. How is it possible that current EU rules allow such projects to go into private ownership?
I confess that I don’t quite understand it myself. I know that with some of the smaller grant projects, we can’t expect what we’re asking for to be valid until the end of time. However, the rule that requires built hotels, bridges or other structures to function and serve their original purpose for only five years – when in the past it was even only three years – is, in my opinion, simply insufficient.
It is called the principle of sustainability, and in principle I think that this period is too short. If we allow someone to build a hotel, guest house or something similar with EU funds, we must ensure that it is used for the intended purpose for a reasonable period of time, not just five years. It can’t just disappear into someone’s private property after a few years. It is EU taxpayers’ money and we want it to be used properly.
Corruption and the state of the rule of law in Slovakia have been increasingly discussed since the murder of Ján Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kušnírová in 2018. Do you feel that the perception of Slovakia on European soil has worsened since then, or is the situation similar to that of 2018?
It’s surprising to me personally how much pressure there was initially to take the situation seriously. It was demanded that consequences be drawn and those responsible for the murder of Ján Kuciak and his fiancee be punished. However, I feel like after a few years it was basically forgotten and things went back to their old ways.
The current attacks on the prosecutor’s office and attempts to abolish the protection of whistleblowers are indeed very disturbing. When I spoke to one such whistleblower (by Zuzana Šubová, former director of the anti-corruption section at the Agricultural Payment Agency, editor’s note) and listening to a dozen cops arrive at her place early in the morning without any real charge or reason to search, all of which just seems like intimidation, I have to say it’s seriously worrying.
These kinds of scare tactics are something we haven’t seen to such an extent even under Orbán. So yes, I am concerned about the current situation, and as I said, that is why we are now pushing for real consequences here in the European Parliament.
