Debate: Breaches of the Rule of law and fundamental rights in Hungary and frozen EU funds
Date: WEDNESDAY, 31 MAY 2023
Speaker: Johannes Hahn
Language: EN

The European Parliament is a valuable partner in the implementation of the Conditionality Regulation, and I am also grateful for your continuous cooperation in this matter. As you are aware, in December last year the Council adopted an implementing decision that suspended 55% of the funds for three operational programmes in cohesion policy. This corresponds to an amount of approximately EUR 6.3 billion in total for the period 2021—2127. The Council implementing decision also prohibited entering into any new legal commitments with public interest trusts or entities maintained by them under any Union programme, directly or indirectly managed by the Commission, notably due to unaddressed risks of conflict of interests for those who sit on the boards of such entities. Since the Council decision of last December, the Commission has been in continuous contact with Hungary about the outstanding issues identified in the Council implementing decision. On almost all of the issues concerned, we have discussed very concrete ways in which Hungary could, in the Commission’s view, resolve the issues at hand. On public interest trusts, the Commission services have already informed Hungary that in order to proceed with the agreements to be signed under the Erasmus+ call for 2023, the cut—off date is fast approaching. The awards should, in principle, be done by mid—July. Only on the 23 and 24 May did Hungary submitted informally revised proposals following comments the Commission sent to Hungary in March and April to address the issues for which the Council took measures, including on public interest trusts. We have been assessing these proposals and will provide feedback to Hungary as soon as possible. Very soon, there will be no time to have the measures on public interest trusts lifted by the Council in time for the Erasmus+ funds for 2023. You are aware that the actual lifting is likely to take two months. It includes the COM analysis and the College decision, then the Council analysis and their decision. Hungary knows this as we have been making this point explicitly for months, including publicly. Nobody can say they were not aware. Hungary’s Recovery and Resilience Plan contains 27 specific ‘super’ milestones. All of them need to be fulfilled before the Commission starts carrying out payments under the Recovery and Resilience Facility. These milestones incorporate all 17 remedial measures presented by Hungary in the context of the rule of law conditionality mechanism. This means that actual payments under Hungary’s RRP are conditional on the successful resolution of the concerns raised under the Conditionality Regulation in line with the Council implementing decisions. RRP payments will take place only after the Commission’s assessment that Hungary has successfully implemented fully and adequately all the remedial measures. Finally, to unlock reimbursements for the funds covered by the Common Provisions regulations, notably cohesion funding management by Hungary, Hungary must fulfil the horizontal enabling conditions requiring effective mechanisms to ensure compliance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU in the implementation of the programmes. Also here, RRP payments are conditional on the fulfilment of so—called super milestones on judicial independence. My colleague Reynders will elaborate more on this.