Brussels is blackmailing Hungary by withholding recovery money?

The Hungarian people “will decide on the issue of child protection in a referendum, not Brussels,” Mate Kocsis, the head of the Fidesz parliamentary group, told a news conference on Thursday.

The government will not change its position on the issue of child protection, Kocsis said after a meeting of the ruling parties in Esztergom, in northern Hungary. He insisted that Brussels was “blackmailing Hungary by withholding recovery money” and vowed to hold a popular vote “on these issues”.

“The Hungarian people will decide the matter,”

the Fidesz politician said.

Referring to the government’s decision to fund programmes that would ordinarily receive EU monies until the funding is made available, he said it was “the right thing to launch our own programmes during the transition period.”

Kocsis said that at the group meeting Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said central European countries were visibly doing better than the rest of the bloc in making an economic recovery, noting that Hungary’s economy was likely to grow by

an annual 7 percent or more this year.

Kocsis said the healthy economy would likely enable the government to introduce extraordinary measures to help individuals and businesses.

Meanwhile, commenting on the 2022 general election campaign, he said the fact that Ferenc Gyurcsány, the former Socialist prime minister, was actively involved on the left would “fire up” the conservative base rather than discouraging it.

“Our historic mission is to settle accounts with the Gyurcsány era,” he said.

Source: MTI