Debate: Continuing threat to the rule of law, the independence of justice and the non-fulfilment of conditionality for EU funding in Hungary
Date: TUESDAY, 21 NOVEMBER 2023
Speaker: Johannes Hahn
Language: EN

Your commitment to this dossier in a constructive dialogue matters. It helps us enforce the Conditionality Regulation. This is of fundamental importance, as the protection of the Union budget is the direct interest of all Europeans. As you know, last December, the Council adopted its implementing decision on measures for the protection of the Union Budget from breaches of the principle of the rule of law in Hungary. The Council decided to suspend 55% of the budgetary commitment 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 current MFF period. The Council 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, due to underdressed risks of conflict of interests for those who sit on the boards of such entities. Just like Didier explained for the judicial independence matters, the above conditionality issues have equally been mirrored as super milestones under the Recovery and Resilience Programme, in agreement with Hungary. Looking back, Hungary did propose remedial measures in the course of the procedure. I would like to underline that there has already been some valuable change in Hungary. For example, there is now an active integrity authority, there are now ways of challenging a prosecutor’s decision not to pursue a case, and OLAF now has reinforced cooperation structures in Hungary. As you know, in December last year, those remedial measures were not fully or correctly implemented at the time of the Council implementing decision. This is still the case today and the measures taken so far are not enough. Also, Hungary has not formally notified any measures to resolve this conditionality case. Since our last encounter on 31 May, Hungary has made progress to find and design draft solutions to address some of the weaknesses identified in the Council implementing decision. This remained to be adopted and implemented in practice, for example, by an amending legislation where necessary. The dialogue with Hungary is particularly intense on issues regarding the prevention of risks of conflict of interest in the boards of public interest trusts, and the extent of the powers of the newly created integrity authority. Let me stress that the Commission continues to thoroughly assess the situation and the remedies proposed and implemented by Hungary in the light of the issues identified under the Council implementing decision and according to the conditions set by the Conditionality Regulation. In any event, the Commission has an obligation to reassess, on its own motion, the situation within one year from the Council implementing decision of 15 December 2022. Therefore, at the latest on 15 December 2023, the Commission will formally adopt an updated assessment of the situation. The procedure for the lifting of measures is clearly set out in the Conditionality Regulation. If Hungary formally submits a written notification to request that measures be lifted, the Commission has one month to decide whether to propose to the Council to adopt or lift the measures. That depends on whether Hungary has remedied, in part or in full, the situation that led to the adoption of measures in the first place. Following the proposal from the Commission, the Council has one month to decide. Both these deadlines can be extended in specific circumstances. So far, this is what I can report at this stage.