Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar will visit Brussels next week to discuss with the European Commission the unblocking of billions in frozen EU funds.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Anita Orban said this in an interview with Politico.
“One of our most important tasks in the first few months is to get access to the recovery and resilience funds, which amount to 10.4 billion euros for Hungary. And yes, I can confirm that a meeting is planned in Brussels next week,” she said.
The minister noted that in recent days, several days of negotiations with Brussels regarding frozen funds have already taken place at the expert level.
The funds were frozen due to Budapest's violations of EU law during the rule of Viktor Orban. The 10.4 billion euros are part of a coronavirus recovery fund and represent only a fraction of the funds Hungary is seeking to unfreeze.
The Magyar government has until August 31 to officially request the money, while the European Commission has until December 31 to make the payments.
Orban noted that Hungary is already working on a number of “super steps” and reforms necessary to gain access to these funds.
“This is restoring the criteria of the rule of law. And this is ensuring that money is spent transparently, absolutely without corruption. And it is important to emphasize here that this was our election mandate. We ran with a certain program. … So these super-stages coincide 100% with what this government will do, what it would do in any case, and also with what the electorate demanded of us,” she said.