BRUSSELS, April 27 (Reuters) – Top EU officials and Hungary’s incoming government will discuss on Wednesday the changes Budapest needs to push through to release 17 billion euros in EU funds that have been blocked due to rule-of-law concerns under the outgoing government.
Some of the frozen funds, such as 11 billion euros ($13 billion) from the post-pandemic Recovery Fund, must be drawn by mid-August, or be irrevocably lost.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Hungary’s incoming prime minister Peter Magyar will take part in the talks, the Commission said.
Officials from both sides have already met twice since the sweeping April 12 election victory of Magyar’s Tisza party, which gave him a two thirds majority in parliament which means he is able to change the constitution.
EU officials say that due to the supermajority he will be able to make the necessary legal changes quickly to unlock the time-sensitive funds.
“These meetings are fully focused on how to make progress on unblocking EU funds earmarked for Hungary,” Commission spokesman Olof Gill told a news briefing on Monday.
“We want to engage in a structured and focused way with the incoming Hungarian government to make sure that at the earliest stage, every action that needs to be taken is taken so that the people of Hungary, for whose benefit those funds were intended, can benefit from them at the earliest stage,” he said.
The Commission froze access to the funds because the outgoing government of Viktor Orban did not comply with EU standards of rule of law.
The talks will focus on what needs to be done to unblock the funds, but could also include issues such as Hungary’s return to the Erasmus student-exchange scheme, suspended since the start of 2023 over concerns regarding academic freedom in Hungary.
They could also include lifting Hungary’s outgoing government’s veto for EU refunds for military equipment that individual EU countries have sent to Ukraine to help Kyiv fend off the Russian invasion since 2022, officials said.
($1 = 0.8512 euros)
(Reporting by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Alison Williams)
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