On 18 September 2022 the Commission proposed the freezing of €7.5 billion in EU funds for Hungary, citing corruption and public procurement concerns, after triggering the EU’s rule of law conditionality mechanism against Hungary in April. MEPs discuss the state of play of the negotiations between the Commission and Hungary linked to the protection of the EU budget and the recovery and resilience plan. Extracts from the debate.

debate

plenary session

IN 'T VELD, Sophia (Renew, NL)

EU - Hungary (T)

SARVAMAA, Petri (EPP, FI)

GARDIAZABAL RUBIAL, Eider (S&D, ES)

REYNDERS, Didier (BE, EC)

BOESELAGER, Damian (Greens/EFA, DE)

Recovery plan for Europe (T)

recovery and resilience facility (T)

Assessment of Hungary's compliance with the rule of law conditions under the conditionality, regulation and state of play of the Hungarian RRP: extracts from the debate

SOUNDBITE (English), Didier REYNDERS, European Commissioner for Justice, Today within the European Union, we have a whole range of instruments that the Commission is ready and has proven to be able to use effectively to protect the EU budget from breaches to the principle of the rule of law.

SOUNDBITE (English), Didier REYNDERS, European Commissioner for Justice, The Commission considered that in Hungary there are systemic irregularity and deficiencies and weaknesses in public procurement insufficiencies in detecting, preventing and correcting conflicts of interest.

SOUNDBITE (English), Didier REYNDERS, European Commissioner for Justice, The Commission is now carefully analysing all the information received, including the available versions of the legal text, to verify the full and correct implementation of the commitments by Hungary.

SOUNDBITE (English), Didier REYNDERS, European Commissioner for Justice, The disbursement of funds to Hungary should be linked to the fulfilling month of milestones covering those remedial measures, as well as those linked to strengthening the independence of the judiciary.

SOUNDBITE (English), Petri SARVAMAA (EPP, FI), The real question, nevertheless, the exact text on the 17 measures, the real question that everybody is waiting to get an answer is- has Hungary done enough so that there is no risk anymore or risk or seriously affecting the sound financial management of the EU budget?

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Eider GARDIAZABAL RUBIAL (S&amp;D, ES), Three measures concluded cannot actually free up the funds, because what measures, what message would be sending out if we were to do that over 12 years? Something that's happened cannot be settled in two months. Just before Black Friday. We're talking about huge amounts of cohesion funds and we're going to approve the recovery fund. That would not be understandable nor justifiable.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN &apos;T VELD (Renew, NL), The Rule of Law Conditionality mechanism was explicitly designed to overcome this stalemate. But again, we see horse trading with our values instead of the Commission and the Council up to defend our common European values. It is time for the Commission and the European Council to show some backbone. Giving in to blackmail by a kleptocrats will be a historic failure. Commissioner, don't miss your appointment with history. The European Council has already missed it.

SOUNDBITE (English), Damian BOESELAGER (Greens/EFA, DE), Orban does know that you, Commissioner, could actually rein him in by cutting the funds that oil his corrupt machine. And that's why he's blackmailing today. But this time he has gone too far. His blackmail is too outrageous and too dangerous. Today he's vetoing the NATO membership of two EU countries, effectively putting the citizens at risk.