The Hungarian government rejects the idea that the European Commission should be allowed to intervene even more strongly in the budgets of Member States, as this would constitute a new double standard, the Hungarian Finance Minister said in Luxembourg on Friday.
Mihály Varga, speaking to Hungarian journalists ahead of a meeting of the Council of Finance Ministers (Ecofin) of EU member states, said the European Commission would put Member States' budgetary policies under closer surveillance, meaning it would want to have a stronger say in the economic policies of individual Member States.
He stressed that Hungary agrees that Member States need a more disciplined fiscal policy after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war, but considers it extremely dangerous that the EU Commission, by applying double standards and taking decisions tailored to Member States, takes budgetary policy out of the hands of them.
"In terms of how we develop a more disciplined fiscal policy, I don't think that the Commission should be given excessive powers and competences. This should remain a matter for national governments to decide on the right economic policies that are most beneficial for their countries," he said.
He said the Hungarian government had already started to do this, reducing public debt and deficits since the pandemic. In the 2024 budget, the deficit is already projected to be below 3 percent, at 2.94 percent, and public debt will continue to fall, as it did last year.
"Hungary will improve its public debt level to 66.7 percent next year, 10 percent better than the EU average, after this year, while the funds due to Hungary are still being withheld by Brussels. So Hungary is setting a good example and making good decisions in this respect," he said.
Commenting on the country-specific recommendations to be presented later in the day, Mihály Varga said that Hungary has verifiably fulfilled the EU commitments required to draw down EU funds, but the European Commission is coming up with more and more objections to keep on withholding the aid it is rightly entitled to.
"We feel that on the basis of the document, the European Commission continues to prepare how not to give the funds due to Hungary. This is unacceptable," he said.
He noted that if these funds had already arrived in the Hungarian budget, Hungary's economic growth last year would have been in the range of over 5 percent, not 4.6 percent.
"Hungary has implemented a number of reforms to access EU funds, so we are counting on the full amount in the 2024 budget," he said.
The finance minister concluded by summing up that there are two important documents on the agenda of Friday's council meeting, where the EU Commission is preparing to extend its powers and to intervene stealthily in the economic policies of Member States. The Hungarian government cannot accept them, and will continue to refuse to allow the Brussels body to use any means to jeopardise the results, including the establishment of a system of utility cost protection, that Hungary has achieved in recent years, Mihály Varga added.
Source: MTI - Hungarian News Agency
