People’s vote: they can postpone the decision on Hungary’s HUF 300 billion EU subsidy
The newspaper understands that at Wednesday’s meeting, the heads of ministries are currently only preparing for an exchange of views on the Commission’s proposal, but the decision will be postponed until later, as France, Germany and Italy, among others, want the Commission to update the assessment of the Orbán government’s commitments, which reflects the situation as of November 19.
According to Népszava, the European Commission has not yet received an official request to supplement the evaluation, but the Czech Republic, which holds the EU presidency until the end of December, has been tasked with forwarding the request and preparing a schedule for completing the procedure.
There is a scenario according to which the ministers of finance could be given the nod for the 2,300 billion forint support program next Tuesday, if the Hungarian cabinet refrains from boycotting the 18 billion euro joint borrowing to help Ukraine and the agreement on the global minimum corporate tax, the newspaper reports.
The paper notes that nothing has been decided yet, the President-in-Office called an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Ambassadors for Monday. Sources closely following the developments do not rule out that the heads of state and government meeting in mid-December will have to judge the 300 billion euro subsidy and the adoption of the recovery plan, Népszava reports.
As reported by Portfolio, according to the European Commission, Hungary has not made sufficient progress in the field of reformsand meet key milestones for funding from the Recovery and Resilience Building Facility.
In the Recovery and Resilience Building Plan, Hungary is required to take corrective measures for legal violations that threaten the EU budget, as well as for other rule of law reforms related to the independence of the judiciary, based on which of the 27 super milestones established. This means that within the framework of the Recovery and Resilience Building Facility (RRF), it cannot be fulfilled until Hungary has fully and accurately implemented the eligibility defined in the 27 super milestones, the Commission said.
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