Fidesz MEP protests EU cutting funds ‘in political punishment’

Hungary’s ruling Fidesz rejects the European Union’s plan to tie community funds to “conditions of a so-called rule of law, as a political punishment”, Fidesz MEP Tamás Deutsch said in a statement in Strasbourg on Wednesday.

Deutsch said the EU’s 2021-2027 budget was “unacceptable” because its authors applied “double standards”. The budget, he added, would significantly reduce regional development and agricultural subsidies.

The MEP said that the European People’s Party, of which Fidesz is a member, had voiced support for his proposals aimed at raising regional and rural development subsidies by 6 billion euros in the 2020 budget.

He insisted that the community should ensure sufficient funding to reimburse member states for projects already completed.

The EU’s development subsidies are “not handouts”, Deutsch said, and argued that rural areas in Hungary were entitled to those funds “on basis of objective criteria”. “No EU institution must consider development funds as a means of exerting political pressure,” he added.

Source: MTI