Election 2018 – Opposition: Orbán would not be PM today without EU funds

Without EU funds, Viktor Orbán would not be Hungary’s prime minister today, the prime ministerial candidate of the opposition Socialist-Párbeszéd alliance said on Monday.

EU funds for Orbán is “what natural gas is for Putin”, Gergely Karácsony told a conference. He sees them as “free money, some of which will, of course, goes to the people.”

Orbán has been using these funds to operate an “ineffective economic system controlled by an oligarchy”, Karácsony said at the event organised by the Foundation for a Liberal Hungary.

Karácsony said EU funds were there to promote development, not help “the prime minister’s relatives stand on their own two feet.”

He vowed to lobby for reform of EU funding rules and seek strict guarantees for democracy and the rule of law, in the event of winning the April 8 general election.

The mechanism for distributing EU funds in Hungary should be less centralised and more transparent, he said.

Ruling Fidesz responded by saying that if Karácsony “and the other Soros people” came to power, they would divert EU funds to schemes caring for migrants. The left wing voted for every “pro-migrant proposal” in the European Parliament that proposed fining countries that do not want to resettle migrants, Fidesz said in a statement.

Source: MTI