Criticism of Orban ‘blackmail’ as European Commission prepares to release €10bn to Hungary

Members of the European Parliament have expressed alarm over an expected decision by the European Commission to release €10 billion in EU funds to Hungary that had been frozen over concerns about the erosion of the rule of law under prime minister Viktor Orbán.

The move to release the funds is expected to come on the eve of a summit of European Union leaders at which Hungary has threatened to block financial and military support to Ukraine and the opening of accession negotiations with Kyiv for EU membership.

Stéphane Séjourné, a French MEP who is president of the Renew group of which Fianna Fáil is a member, said the EU had been subject to “blackmail” by Mr Orbán. “Currently we have no guarantee that there will be a sustainable return to liberal democracy,” he told reporters. “As far as we’re concerned we would be against releasing any European funds. No single euro should be given to a country which doesn’t adhere to the rule of law.”

The money is part of a large tranche of EU funding for economic supports and development that the European Commission froze a year ago, insisting that Hungary needed to pass reforms to ensure judicial independence, academic freedom and LGBTQ+ rights in order to access it.

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Commission officials now say that Hungary has complied with the required reforms of its judiciary and that this is sufficient for it to start drawing down €10 billion of the €22 billion in funding that was frozen.

Manfred Weber, leader of the European People’s Party of Fine Gael in the European Parliament, said the decision by the commission was based on a “legal assessment” rather than being a political move, and that he counted on commission officials to implement the rules correctly. “If there is progress in countries currently with blocked funds, then we must be strong enough to accept that this is unblocked,” Mr Weber said.

The timing of the decision, however, has raised suspicions that this is an attempt to persuade Mr Orbán to drop his veto on Ukraine’s support package and accession – though as Hungary has remained adamant on its position it is unclear whether this will be successful.

Critics have raised serious questions about whether the reforms put in place by Hungary should be considered sufficient to unblock the funds, with lawyers at rule-of-law watchdog the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, András Kádár and Erika Farkas, writing on an influential legal blog that Budapest had used technical “tricks” to pass reforms that appeared to bring change but would actually maintain the status quo.

Reforms introduced include measures to ensure the independence of Hungary’s supreme court by changing how its president is appointed, the removal of obstacles to Hungarian judges referring matters to the European Court of Justice, and improved transparency in how legal cases are assigned to judges. The latter reform exists “only on paper” but was not implemented, Mr Kádár and Ms Farkas wrote.

Daniel Freund, a German Green MEP who has been a leading voice in raising the alarm over democratic backsliding in Hungary and urging EU leaders to take stronger action to stop it, has called on EU countries to reverse course and move towards stripping Hungary of its voting rights. He pointed to the Hungarian government’s cultivation of links with the regime of Russian president Vladimir Putin through repeated meetings, deepening of energy ties and a highly symbolic handshake between Mr Orbán and Mr Putin in October.

“Orbán should be stripped of all EU funds,” he urged.

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