To anyone looking in from the outside, the ongoing argument between Budapest and Brussels over EU subsidies, which flared up again this week, looks both drearily legalistic and eye-glazingly boring. However, as often happens with the EU and its member states in eastern Europe, there is a good deal more to all this than meets the eye.
At issue is a tad over €13 billion: €7.5 billion in ‘cohesion funds’ (i.e. regular subsidies to help out poorer states) and €5.8 billion in Covid recovery funds. Both would normally have gone to Hungary without serious question. However, these are not normal times. Brussels has arguments with Hungary about what it refers to as rule of law issues: judicial independence; areas seen as corrupt or nepotistic; public procurement laws; and accounting for EU funds. There are also points of disagreement on matters of social policy: notably LGBT rights and migration.
In these areas, the EU claims that Hungary is in breach of the bloc’s norms and has made it clear that it would like to condition both cohesion and recovery payments on Budapest reaching EU standards (something which, it must be admitted, the European Court would almost certainly hold permissible under EU law).
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