Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has also stated several times that this money is not given by the EU as support, but that it belongs to us. He already spoke about this almost 20 years ago. Despite the current political debate, funds are continuously coming to Hungary, and even if the negotiations drag on, our country will still receive the remaining amounts later.

“This is the European Union, where we have rights, and we exercise our rights within the European Union. We are entitled to this money, you know? We don’t receive this as support or assistance, we have a right to this, for many reasons. First of all, we paid for it. This money is not given as a gift, we paid the price for it in advance,” Viktor Orbán said in 2006 regarding EU funds, when the then left-wing government accused him of campaigning to prevent Hungary from receiving Brussels funds.

Interestingly, the Tisza Party’s MEP, Kinga Kollár, made a statement last week that outraged many people regarding EU funds. She expressed her joy that the funds withheld due to the rule of law debate are helping the opposition.

Now, the Tisza Party is trying to hit back at the prime minister, claiming Orbán was happy the EU was withholding funds 19 year ago. Orbán’s top political rival, Péter Magyar, is repeating a Gyurcsány lie that has been spread since 2006 to make people forget that the Tisza representative is happy about the withdrawal of EU funds because it improves their electoral chances.

Viktor Orbán firmly stated 19 years ago, even as part of the opposition, that these resources are not a matter of favor “given” to the government, but quite the opposite. This is money that the country deserves.

Sooner or later, we’ll get it

Therefore, it can be stated with almost certainty that the sums awarded to Hungary from the EU budget will sooner or later be received by our country.

“Hungary has more than €12 billion in EU funds in its account, we should receive the additional EU funds in 2027-2028. Otherwise, the EU will not have a budget, we will not contribute to it,” the prime minister said on Kossuth Radio in December last year. He added: “There is a lot of inconvenience,” but there is no doubt that these funds will arrive in the Hungarian economy.

The prime minister’s words made it clear that if the full funding package is not given the green light, Hungary will veto the EU budget, which must be approved unanimously.

However, Brussels may already be worried about the discussions of the next budget cycle, as financing from loans is becoming an eyesore for more and more member states.

At a conference on Monday, János Bóka, Minister for European Union Affairs, also spoke about this. As he mentioned in his speech, the EU already pays astonishing amounts of money in interest on loan repayments, for example, this year it could reach €4 billion per year, and next year it could rise to over €6.5 billion. By 2028, interest and loan costs could take up 20 percent of the entire budget.

One of the most important rule-of-law conditions in Brussels now seems to be that there should be a change of government in Hungary, Bóka added.

“This will start a debate about whether this can be financed,” he said.

He added that cohesion policy has long been under attack by contributors, who argue that this catching-up should finally be completed, and they would like to complete it with Ukraine’s entry. There is a serious debate about this, but the fact is that the power of cohesion policy is weakening within the EU, and its phase-out has practically already begun.

As it stands, Hungary’s access to EU funds is continuous. Out of the total amount due to us, approximately €20 billion are currently suspended, of which €9.45 billion are cohesion funds, while €10.4 billion are not coming to us from the Recovery and Resilience Plan. However, a significant part of the latter is non-repayable support.

János Bóka also noted that the government has implemented numerous reforms on most controversial issues, and has also managed to reach an agreement with the European Commission on a significant number of them, but the European Parliament still did not allow the ban to be lifted.

There are certain deadlines, for example, for the already mentioned RRF funds, an implementation plan should be submitted by 2026. However, Gergely Gulyás, the minister in charge of the Prime Minister’s Office, said in an interview at the beginning of this year that since the other 26 member states are not doing well with implementation either, this deadline will definitely be postponed. This means more time for the EU leadership to reach an agreement with the Hungarian government on the controversial issues.

Incidentally, the Hungarian minister recently confirmed this again in a government briefing. At the time, he said that if the government can reach an agreement with the European Commission by the end of 2026, then our country will not suffer.