The finance minister announced in Brussels on Friday that the EU finance ministers accepted Hungary's amended recovery plan, another obstacle to the disbursement of funds due to our country has been removed.
Speaking to Hungarian journalists after the meeting of the Council of Finance Ministers of the EU Member States (Ecofin), Mihály Varga highlighted that all this means that the recovery plan has been officially supplemented with a loan portion of 3.9 billion euros in addition to the 5.8 billion euros of non-refundable support, with an additional 0.7 billion of non-refundable budget from the REPowerEU plan.
He said that the approval by the Council of Finance Ministers means that the advance tranche of €920 million (around HUF 380 billion) could arrive as early as January.
"This removes the last obstacle to Hungary's access to the money it is entitled to," Mihály Varga said.
The finance minister reminded that in addition to the REPowerEU support, the Hungarian government will use the loan part mainly for investments and developments that support green transition. He stressed that Hungary has permanently attached great importance to the green transition and is committed to being one of the winners of the green transition. Therefore, he said 67.1 percent of the total program will target elements of the green transition.
Mihály Varga expressed his hope that the cohesion and reconstruction funds will soon be released, as "Hungary has fulfilled all the conditions, so it can get the funds it is entitled to as soon as possible."
The Minister also informed about the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council which failed to reach a compromise on economic governance reform and that discussions on this issue will continue. Hungary has always maintained that the room for maneuvering of national governments in budgetary policy should be increased, not that of the European Commission, he said.
"The Hungarian Government's position has always been open and clear: the reform of economic governance must fundamentally expand the instruments of nation-states, of national governments," the Minister said, adding that Member States are best placed to decide what their economies need, and how to restore public finances and economic growth to a balanced path. Hungary would give the European Commission much less powers, he underlined.
Finally, Mihály Varga said that Hungary had previously proposed that a unique set of rules should be defined for defense spending, according to which the additional costs related to the defense sector would not be included in the deficit under the Maastricht criterion. The finance minister added that the Hungarian proposal was finally included in the draft economic reform package, which demonstrates the government's strong lobbying capacity.
Source: MTI-Hungarian News Agency
