By Jan Strupczewski and Krisztina Than<\/p>\n
BRUSSELS, May 29 (Reuters) – Hungary’s progress in reforms under its new government will allow the European Commission to unlock \u20ac16.4 billion \u200cof previously frozen EU recovery and cohesion funds for the country, European Commission \u200chead Ursula von der Leyen said.<\/p>\n
Von der Leyen told reporters after meeting Hungary’s Prime Minister Peter Magyar that \u200bthe EU would unlock \u20ac10 billion ($11.6 billion) from the recovery fund, called Next Generation EU, and \u20ac4.2 billion in cohesion funds, with a further \u20ac2.2 billion as the reforms are completed.<\/p>\n
“I can confirm that it is \u20ac10 billion that have been unfrozen or will be unfrozen from Next Generation EU, \u200cthen the \u20ac4.2 billion from the \u2060cohesion conditionality and 2.2 billion for the academic freedom, which makes it \u20ac16.4 billion,” von der Leyen said.<\/p>\n
“That is quite a sum, but …the Hungarian \u2060people deserve it. Again, many, many thanks for the outstanding work that has been done,” she said.<\/p>\n
The EU money is crucial to kick-start the Hungarian economy that has practically stagnated for 3 \u200byears.<\/p>\n
The \u200bnew government inherited a swelling budget deficit that \u200baccording to the Commission might reach \u200c6.2% of GDP in 2026 after heavy pre-election spending by former Prime Minister Viktor Orban, ousted in an election last month.<\/p>\n
Hungary’s central bank left its base rate steady at 6.25% on May 26, as expected, after a rise in global energy prices and domestic fiscal risks, but noted a significant improvement in the inflation outlook amid strong gains in \u200cthe forint. The forint has been boosted by hopes \u200bthe EU funds would be unlocked.<\/p>\n
“We will bring \u200bthis money home, as we promised, to \u200brebuild Hungary, to jump-start the economy, to restore and develop public \u200cservices, and to strengthen the competitiveness of \u200bHungarian companies and small \u200band medium-sized enterprises,” Magyar told the news conference.<\/p>\n
He said the deal on the EU money showed his government’s anti-corruption measures were paying off — fighting corruption, rampant under \u200bthe Orban government, was \u200cone of the key conditions for the EU to unfreeze the money.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.8589 \u200beuros)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Jan Strupczewski and Sudip Kar-Gupta in Brussels and Krisztina Than and \u200bAnita Komuves in BudapestEditing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jan Strupczewski and Krisztina Than BRUSSELS, May 29 (Reuters) – Hungary’s progress in reforms under its new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":992287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[275585,2000,299,5187,2557,2190,11854,1220],"class_list":["post-992286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-cohesion-funds","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-commission","tag-hungary","tag-peter-magyar","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116658037511551752","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=992286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/992287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=992286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=992286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=992286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}