Hungary wants to know who is responsible for the European Union having been “pushed to the brink of bankruptcy”, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in Brussels on Thursday.
“Everyone has a single question in Brussels right now: where has the money gone?” Orbán said in a video on Facebook ahead of a summit of EU leaders.
He said the European Commission had proposed an amendment to the EU budget, “and is requesting hundreds of billions more in contributions from member states”.
The prime minister said this raised the question of “how is it that the European Union could be pushed to the brink of bankruptcy”.
“Where has the money gone?” – Orbán asks in his Facebook post:
Detailing the EC’s amendment proposal, Orbán noted that member states were being asked to contribute another EUR 50 billion to the budget “so that they can give it to Ukraine even though they can’t account for the money we’ve already contributed”.
“They want a lot of money from member states so that they can cover the interests on earlier EU loans,” the prime minister said. “These are the loans from which Poland and Hungary have yet to receive a single penny.”
Orbán said it was “unserious” of the EU to “want more money for migration, though not for border protection, but to bring migrants in”.
“And of course, they haven’t forgotten about themselves, either,” he said. “They’re asking for billions of euros to raise the salaries of the Brussels bureaucrats.”
Hungary’s position is clear, Orbán said. “First and foremost we want to know what all that money we have contributed so far has been spent on,” he said. “And then we want an answer to the question of who is responsible for the European Union being pushed to the brink of bankruptcy.”
