Government spokesman: EU funding is not a “system of donations”

Planned regulations tying EU funding to adherence to the principle of rule of law are an attempt to circumvent the EU treaties, which contain clear rules on distributing funds, Zoltán Kovács, the state secretary for international communication and relations, told the Austrian daily Kurier.

In an interview published on Thursday, Kovács said EU funding was a compensation for central and eastern European countries opening their markets to other member states, not a “system of donations”.

Regarding the rule of law mechanism, on which the EU is looking to make funding conditional for member states, Kovács said it was “part of a political game” and contained no clear definitions or criteria.

When asked why Hungary continued to link the debate regarding the EU’s 2021-2027 budget and its coronavirus recovery fund to the issue of migration, Kovács said financier George “Soros’s plans are becoming political reality in Europe and his plan says that Europe’s future depends on migration and that we should accept migrants out of solidarity.”

He insisted that Brussels saw free passage into Europe as a human right of migrants, and had prepared plans for their mandatory distribution. “Don’t think we’re idiots!”, he added.

Kovács called spectulations about Hungary leaving the EU “fiction”. No one in the Hungarian government entertains that notion, he said, adding that the idea is “a favourite plaything of the Hungarian opposition and the European left.”

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Source: MTI