Hungary has had its European funds frozen for breaching EU rules, with the country having to commit to reforms by 2025 or risk losing billions of euros worth of additional resources.
Hungary lost the right to additional funds from the European Union (EU) funds due to violation of the principles of the rule of law. To release them, the country had to implement the required reforms by the end of 2025, which did not happen. TASR informs about it based on the report of the DPA agency.
According to the European Commission (EC), this is more than a billion euros that have been allocated to Hungary as part of programs to support less developed regions. Funds originally earmarked for 2023 were frozen because the Commission, based on its analyses, concluded that Budapest was in breach of various EU standards and core values. The findings related, for example, to shortcomings in the awarding of public contracts and the fight against corruption, conflict of interests, as well as the actions of the prosecutor’s office.
If Hungary does not continue to implement sufficient reforms, it risks losing more billions in the future. Under the EU’s mechanism to protect the rule of law, which applies from 2021, the frozen funds are forfeited at the end of the second calendar year after the year for which they were originally allocated, unless the EU Council of Ministers overturns the decision to block them. At the end of 2022, around 6.3 billion euros from the multi-annual common EU budget for the years 2021 to 2027 intended for Hungary were frozen through this mechanism.
