Fidesz MEP Tamás Deutsch said that light must be shed on how much money the European Commission has handed over to Ukraine and under which legal instruments.
During an interview with public radio, Deutsch said the money had been granted from funding covered by the first two-and-a-half years of the European Union budget cycle which started in 2021, and it should be clarified how much money the EU has provided to support the Ukrainians since the outbreak of the war for arms deliveries, loans and subsidies among others. He accused the “Brussels bureaucracy” of using “tricks” to hide the amount of money it had given to Ukraine, and he likened the EU’s handling of money to “the well-known methods of Hungarian budget management of the [former PM Ferenc] Gyurcsány era”. The EU budget, he noted, was adopted by the European Council and the European Parliament in December 2020, and the issue of funding for Ukraine arose afterwards, adding that it was fair to assume that the billions of euros allocated to Ukraine were “reallocated from other EU programmes, either authorised or unauthorised”. Before the vote on the requirement for member states to pay an additional 60-70 billion euros, it should be revealed “why the disbursement of EU funds to member states is so slow”, he said, also referring to funds withheld from Poland and Hungary, which he said amounted to “political blackmail”. He added that “Brussels” had divvied out “barely 2.5% of regional development funds of the seven-year budget to the 27 EU member states in three years”. Not only did Hungary and Poland not receive “a single cent” from the recovery fund, but three other member states received money “as a reward”, while the other 22 EU member states received “less than 20 percent of the funds available until the end of December 2026”, Deutsch said. The Fidesz MEP queried whether funds for EU member states were not reaching them because the money was being diverted to Ukraine, adding that the seven-year budget “did not contain any kind of authorisation or provision for this”.