EU: Hungary must change procurement to bar “systemic fraud” – UPDATE

The European Union has called on Hungary to reform its public procurement laws in order to curb systemic fraud – reports Reuters.

According to an internal document acquired by the news agency, the Hungarian government should make some alterations in the procedures before obtaining its part from the pandemic recovery fund of 750 billion euros created to help EU countries.

The document signed on 26 January

lays out concrete legal changes the government of Viktor Orbán has to carry out.

According to information of Reuters, Hungary has not reacted to the EU’s observations.

“Competition on public procurement is insufficient in practice; this is related to systemic irregularities that led to the highest financial correction in the history of (EU) structural funds in 2019.” – writes the letter sent by the EU.

The EU also called un correcting data transparency and accessibility.

They argue this would lead to much fairer and more open public procurements procedures.

Reuters also adds that on the course of an inspection carried out by OLAF (European Anti-Fraud Office) last year, between 2015 and 2019 they found irregularities in the case of 4% of the country’s spending of EU funds. The EU average is 0.36%, the second-worst score, 0.53% belongs to Slovakia.

UPDATE

The Prime Minister’s chief of staff said on Tuesday that reports of the European Commission requiring amendments to Hungary’s public procurement laws were “fake news”. Details HERE.

Read alsoHungary has the second-lowest minimum wage in the EU

Source: reuters.com