Fidesz MEP: Member states need all available funds in current situation
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European Union member states, including Hungary and Poland, are in need of all the funds available “in the current challenging situation”, Fidesz MEP Balázs Hidvéghi said in Strasbourg on Wednesday.
“We ask the [EU’s] Czech presidency to help ensure that all member states, including Hungary and Poland, can access the EU funds they are entitled to as soon as possible,” Hidvéghi told Hungarian reporters after a European parliamentary debate on the priorities of Czechia’s presidency of the Council of the European Union.
This is not only needed because the EU’s eastern member states are currently facing the bloc’s biggest ever refugee crisis and taking in the most refugees, but also because the EU faces the threat of a severe economic and energy crisis, he said.
Czechia is taking over the EU’s rotating presidency in a time of unprecedented economic and security challenges, Hidvéghi said. In times like these, the bloc cannot afford to be internally divided or to be bogged down in “unnecessary debates” that go nowhere and only weaken its unity, he added.
“Having one of the Visegrád Group countries hold the presidency of the Council of the EU for the next six months gives us hope that the region’s interests will be a bigger factor in EU decision making,” Hidvéghi said.