The Finnish EU presidency’s budget proposal for the next seven-year cycle is unacceptable to Hungary, Justice Minister Judit Varga has said in Brussels.
Following the Brussels meeting of EU ministers regarding general EU affairs, Varga told Hungarian journalists that the Finnish presidency failed to present an unbiased budget proposal.
She said one of the key misgivings of Hungary was that the proposal would further reduce the amount available for cohesion within the development budget.
Several member states have noted that the budget failed to reflect their and others’ proposals and that the authors of the budget did not take into account the request of the group of states called friends of cohesion who expressly asked that cohesion funds be increased above what the European Commission had proposed earlier.
This is partly due to a significant reduction in budget revenues due to the departure of the United Kingdom, but that shouldn’t necessarily impact cohesion funds.
Varga said the budget draft is inadequate both on the revenue and on the cohesion expenditures side, thus unfit from the basis of a general political debate.
She also said that Hungary could not accept the concept that budget payments to member states should be made conditional of rule of law criteria, nor that the amount for the settlement of migrants would be sourced from cohesion funds.
Instead of furthering the process, this proposal only delays the budgeting process as it only takes into account the interests of net contributor countries while also hurting several other member states’ interests whose input has not been included.
Title image: Hungarian justice minister Judit Varga (MTI/Tibor Rosta)
