BUDAPEST — If Brussels claws back €10 billion of EU funds controversially disbursed to Hungary, it will also have to recover as much as €137 billion from Poland too, Budapest’s EU affairs minister told POLITICO.
The European Commission made a highly contentious decision in December 2023 to free up €10 billion of EU funds to Hungary that had been frozen because of weaknesses on rule of law deficiencies and backsliding on judicial independence.
Members of the European Parliament condemned what looked like a political decision, offering a sweetener to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán just before a key summit where the EU needed his support for Ukraine aid.
On Feb. 12, Court of Justice of the European Union Advocate General Tamara Ćapeta recommended annulling the decision, meaning Hungary may have to return the funds if the court follows in its final ruling in the coming months. Orbán has slammed the idea of a repayment as “absurd.”
János Bóka, Hungary’s EU affairs minister, told POLITICO that clawing back the €10 billion from the euroskeptic government in Budapest would mean that Brussels should also be recovering cash from Poland, led by pro-EU Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
“We believe that the Commission’s decision was lawful … the opinion, I think, it’s legally excessive,” Bóka said. He warned that “if the Advocate General’s opinion is followed then the Commission would be legally required to freeze all the EU money going to Poland as well, which I think in any case the Commission is not willing to do.”
The legal opinion on Hungary states the the Commission was wrong in unfreezing the funds “before the required legislative reforms had entered into force or were being applied,” Ćapeta said in February.
Bóka said that would seem to describe the situation in Poland too.
In February 2024, the EU executive released €137 billion in frozen funds to Tusk’s government in exchange for promised judicial reforms. But these have since been blocked by President Karol Nawrocki as tensions between the two worsen — spelling trouble for Poland’s continued access to EU cash.
“It’s very easy to get the EU funds if they want to give it to you, as we could see in the case of Poland, where they could get the funds with a page-and-a-half action plan, which is still not implemented because of legislative difficulty,” Bóka said.
Fundamentally, that is why Bóka said he believed “the court will not issue any judgment that would put Poland in a difficult position.”
Bóka risks leaving office with Orbán after the April 12 election, with opposition leader Péter Magyar leading in the polls on a platform of unlocking EU funds, tackling corruption, and improving healthcare and education.
The Commission is, separately, withholding another €18 billion of Hungarian funds — €7.6 billion in cohesion funds and €10.4 billion from the coronavirus recovery package.
“I think Péter Magyar is right when he says that the Commission wants to give this money to them … in exchange, like they did in the case of Poland, they want alignment in key policy areas,” he said, “like support for Ukraine, green-lighting progress in Ukraine’s accession process, decoupling from Russian oil and gas, and implementing the Migration Pact.”
“Just like in the case of Poland, they might allow rhetorical deviation from the line, but in key areas, they want alignment and compliance.”
Poland’s Tusk has been vocal against EU laws, such as the migration pact and carbon emission reduction laws.
Bóka also accused the Commission of deciding “not to engage in meaningful discussions [on EU funds] as the elections drew closer.”
He added that if Orbán’s Fidesz were to win the election, “neither us nor the Commission will have any other choice than to sit down and discuss how we can make progress in this process.”
Legal experts are cautious about assessing the potential impact of such a ruling, noting that the funds for Poland and Hungary were frozen under different legal frameworks. However, there is broad agreement that the case is likely to set some form of precedent over how the Commission handles disbursements of EU funds to its members.
If the legal opinion is followed, “there could be a strong case against disbursing funds against Poland,” said Jacob Öberg, EU law professor at University of Southern Denmark. He said, however, that it is not certain the court will follow Ćapeta’s opinion because the cases assess different national contexts.
Paul Dermine, EU law professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles agreed the court ruling could “at least in theory, have repercussions on what happened in the Polish case,” but said that he thought judges would follow the legal opinion “as the wrongdoings of the Commission in the Hungarian case are quite blatant.”
Hungary to EU: If you claw back €10B from us, you must demand Poland’s €137B too
Source: Viral Showbiz Pinay
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