Hungarian News

The unavoidable happened

• April 6, 2022
• István
• 28 Comments

Exactly 2 days after the elections the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced in the European parliament that she started the rule of law procedure against Hungary ►HU. This means that during the summer of 2022 funding for helping Hungary catching up with the rest of Europe will find an end. Since the problem is structurally endangering every funding and not just a special segment this may be a full stop. In fact this money is for a huge portion used for the personal enrichment of FIDESZ elite. Since the Hungarian authorities do not act against this fraud, do not prosecute the fraudulent persons, no legal review of illegal acts are possible, the EU will freeze this thriving mean of the Hungarian economy. In many years during the rule of Orbán the direct payments from the EU were higher than the growth of GDP, not to forget the fact that this multiplied economic effects, the not stolen part of this funding contributed in the development of our country, people were in jobs, paid taxes, spent their money again….

Despite the regime announced proudly a few days before the elections that Orbán told the EU that Hungary will against an earlier decision take place in the RRF credit and that the money starts flowing, money available to fill the holes in the budget caused by the elections won’t come. Well, in fact we should talk about craters after meteorite impacts instead of holes, the budget looks like the surface of the moon. The costs of the elections for the state – including tax refunds and state funded billboards – are estimated to be above 4.5 billion Euro. The rest EU funding from the cycle that ended in 2020 of 300 million Euro Hungary will get earlier to be able in helping refugees from Ukraine are not even worth mentioning compared to the excessive spending. Nevertheless the regime mixed everything and told the badly informed voters that the EU has opened the money tap even further before the elections.

The next steps are that Orbán has to react onto the demands of the commission, often enough belittled as just being a “letter.” If he does not fulfil the demands – what we shouldn’t expect at all, but it is part of the legal procedure – the council, this is the gathering of the heads of governments and states, has to vote about it. Orbán may defend himself, but he only will be able to win time with this strategy. But the timeframe is set tight, a lesson the EU learned from the never ending Art 7 procedure. The voting in the council is no obstacle, it needs to be done with the usual qualified majority, 11 states would be needed to side with Orbán and only 2 months ago there seemed to be 2 on his side, as it looks today it will be a maximum of 1. And this last one faces to be voted out within 3 weeks by losing his coalition partners. It is not optimistic but realistic to claim that late in the summer of 2022 this flow of money will be ended.

And no, Orbán can’t go to the courts to postpone execution of the decision. He may lodge a complaint of course, but this doesn’t effect execution. Since the ECJ declared the mechanism to be legal there only remain procedural mistakes or abusive application to be used as reasoning. I can’t imagine that deadlines are calculated wrongly or votes not counted correctly. And the same court has so often found serious problems concerning the rule of law in Hungary that the judges hardly would see an abuse of the mechanism.

At the same afternoon the EU announced the rule of law mechanism being applied against the Orbán regime our foreign minister called the EU to end making grandiose statements and to step down from the high horse. He called the EU for admitting Serbia immediately and giving Bosnia Herzegovina the status of a candidate member ►HU. Without going into the depth of the problems the regime favoured Bosnian Serbs are causing to their own country, that they are opponents of the Serb president, and other less logical errors in the Hungarian Balkan policies, the EU just doesn’t want another Orbán-like regime in the club. In Austria living Hungarian publicist Paul Lendvai wrote about the elections in Hungary and Serbia last Sunday as ►DE: “Putin’s victories in Budapest and Belgrade.” He declared that the EU has not to expect anything positive from our regime, however this the EU obviously understood as well and ended the shortsighted inactivity, he also criticised just before the EU finally acted indeed.

And what did our minister in the office of the prime minister Gergely Gulyás say in reaction to the announcement of the EU? Child protection ►HU! He was very proud of the hateful anti-gay referendum, obviously he didn’t understand that it failed – so many voted invalid or did not participate at all. And the Orbán-hates-gay-law was introduced more than half a year after the rule of law mechanism. Further the EU “blows the same song” as the “Hungarian left” – and this wasn’t elected. As if the basic values of the EU could be abolished by national elections. Gulyás wants the EU to return to dialogue. Well, he may answer to the demands of the commission, also this could be a dialogue. Orbán may defend his actions in the council. They may offer to join the European prosecutor office for example. Sure, this won’t happen, but this would be part of a constructive dialogue how to solve Hungary’s problems. Probably Gulyás doesn’t understand that peacock dancing is no dialogue, that the EU has enough of empty promises. Of course it is hard to admit 2 days after the elections that the opposition was right about EU funding and the ever-lying propaganda machine has deceived the voters.

The economic world understood the meaning of the EU decision. So the Euro was yesterday before the announcement moving between 369.0 and 369.2 Forint, shot up to 379.8 within minutes and is at the moment of writing at 379.6 Ft for 1 € ►EN. The shares of Lőrinc Mészáros’ Opus Global were yesterday early afternoon traded at 240 Ft, right now at 218 Ft ►EN. More than 3 times more than the BUX lost since yesterday 14:00 and 6 times more than the Euro Stoxx 50 during the same period.