BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungary hopes to reach an agreement with EU authorities by the end of the year on gaining access to billions of euros worth of pandemic recovery funding, state news agency MTI cited the country’s EU affairs minister as saying.
The European Commission has frozen access to some EU funds for Hungary and Poland over their nationalist governments’ restrictive stance on migration, discrimination against women and gays, and state controls over institutions including media and the courts.
Hungarian Minister Tibor Navracsics told MTI late on Thursday that Budapest would do everything it could to be able to sign an agreement on Hungary’s recovery plan “in the second half of the year or toward the end of the year.”
Navracsics added that the process leading to the signature of the agreement was “complicated”, striking a less optimistic note than on Tuesday, when Hungary had indicated that negotiations were in their last phase.
Hungary has initially requested 7.2 billion euros ($7.7 billion) in grants under the EU’s pandemic recovery facility, but after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Prime Minister Viktor Orban signalled that he also planned to tap the cheap loans offered under the programme.
On Wednesday the EU Commission approved billions of euros in recovery funds for Poland, but subject to milestones related to aspects of the independence of the judiciary.
The absence of a similar deal for Budapest and recently announced windfall taxes on banks and energy firms have pressured Hungarian financial markets, sending the forint to all-time-lows versus the Polish zloty this week.
($1 = 0.9299 euros)
(Reporting by Gergely Szakacs; editing by John Stonestreet)
