Yesterday marked the black day of PM Viktor Orbán since the European Union launched two separate procedures against his government. Brussels is to attack the release of human smugglers from Hungarian prisons at court, and they disagree with the fixed pricing of the building materials.
According to mfor.hu, the European Commission launched two separate infringement procedures against the Hungarian government yesterday. And the Hungarian news outlet believes it will be difficult to evade a fine. In the case of releasing human smugglers from Hungarian prisons, the European Commission already sent its relevant notice to the Orbán cabinet.
The Commission believes that the government broke several EU directives because it did not consider the circumstances. Furthermore, Brussels believes that such short sanctions are not effective. The Hungarian foreign minister reacted harshly to the accusations.
According to telex.hu, Hungary cannot receive money from three separate EU funds due to the infringement and rule-of-law procedures. The first one is the biggest, EUR 22 billion of development funds. The second one is smaller but still remarkably high considering the worrisome state of Hungary’s state budget, the RRF (Recovery and Resilience Facility) funds, almost EUR 5.8 billion in non-refundable allocations and EUR 9.7 billion in discounted loans. Furthermore, 21 Hungarian universities will not be able to take part in the Erasmus and Horizon programs from September. We wrote about that issue HERE.
Minister outraged because of the new procedures
Péter Szijjártó, Hungary’s foreign minister, said at a press conference that the EU is the “largest supporter of migration.” The European Union‘s migration policy is the hotbed of people smugglers’ success, which makes the infringement procedure launched against Hungary for expelling foreign people smugglers especially hypocritical, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said on Friday.
Szijjártó told a press conference held jointly with his Bosnian counterpart Elmedin Konakovic, that “the business model of people smugglers works precisely because of Brussels’ pro-migration policy”, MTI wrote. Rather than stating that legal entry is the only way to come to Europe, “Brussels forces [resettlement] quotas, practically sending an invitation letter to every migrant to come here,” he said.
Because of all that, the EU’s infringement procedure against Hungarian legislation on expelling people smugglers to serve their detentions in their former country of residence is “unacceptable, hypocritical and ludicrous,” he said. Hungary has spent some HUF 650 billion (EUR 1.7 billion) on border protection, and received a mere 1 percent of that in compensation from the EU, he noted.
Szijjártó said the Hungarian legislation, adopted in April 2023, aims to “expel people smugglers because it is better to have them outside the country. We expel them because we are not willing to spend Hungarian taxpayers’ money on them. Especially if they then turn to European courts, wanting money for not having been treated well.” “Besides committing crimes, and crimes facilitated by the European Union, we should also pay for not treating them well in Hungarian prisons,” he said.
Here are some photos of the 3-day-long government session held in Sopron:
