EU funds withheld from Hungary over school discrimination?

The European Commission withholds economic recovery funds from Hungary “because of educational discrimination”, Enikő Győri, MEP of ruling Fidesz, told MTI on Wednesday, quoting remarks by Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, made at a recent Ecofin meeting.

Győri also quoted Gentiloni as saying at a personal meeting earlier that “recovery funds cannot be linked to issues of national competency without financial consequences”.

Győri insisted that the European Commission was “violating the law, taking a discriminative sabotage action, and playing political games”. At Tuesday’s Ecofin meeting

the Commission “admitted that it links issues that could not be connected under the EU treaties or under (EU) legislation on recovery funds,”

she said.

The Commission has violated an earlier agreement between EU leaders under which a rule of law mechanism could not be launched against a member state before a relevant European court ruling, Győri said, and called on the European Council’s incoming French presidency “not to give room to the Commission’s illegitimate behaviours” and to table the Hungarian government’s recovery plan before the body.