If we look up the reasons why the European Union has established its subsidy system, we can easly find out that the goal was to reduce economic and social disparity and help disadvantaged regions catch up, Magyar Idők columnist Gergely Kiss writes.
None of the EU’s documents mention anything about using this system to blackmail individual member states. Nor is it written anywhere that if the French President doesn’t like the policies of Poland and Hungary he can close the tap.
The rules do, however, say that funding from the cohesion funds can be suspended in case a country has an excessive budget deficit and doesn’t implement measures to reduce it. The French are exactly in this position: for years, they have been unable to push the budget deficit below the required three percent of GDP limit.
The EU had to extend the deadline for France three times and finally, after ten years they managed to stay below three percent in 2017. Whether they can repeat this in the current year is anybody’s guess.
Hungary – three years after the election of the Orbán-government has pushed its deficit below the limit and kept it there ever since. The country has also opened its markets to multinational retailers at the detriment of smaller local firms.
Now Macron is threatening us with the withdrawal of EU subsidies just because he doesn’t like Hungarian policies. But who is going to decide how short have we fallen and what penalty to impose on the country? Perhaps the likes of Sargentini, those linked to Soros, or the liberal media? This is a nightmare!
So we should ask ourselves: who has deviated from the Union’s fundamental values? Hungary, because it abides its rules by defending its borders, leading a sustainable fiscal policy and providing its citizens with better living conditions?
Or perhaps those, who are willing to sacrifice every European value on the altar of liberalism?
