Tamás Deutsch, the leader of ruling Fidesz’s European parliamentary delegation, said the institutions of the European Union and the “everyday operations of Brussels bureaucracy are … entangled in a web of corruption”.
Speaking on the sidelines of an EP plenary session on Wednesday, Deutsch said that while the session’s agenda contained “more than 50 proposals” on budgetary issues from 2021, none of them addressed corruption in EU institutions. MEPs of Fidesz and Hungary’s Christian Democrats (KDNP) will vote against those reports, he said. “Brussels bureaucrats seem to take the people for fools, and think that if they don’t speak of corruption, it doesn’t exist,” he said. While the EP’s Committee on Budgetary Control (CONT) failed to mention EU corruption in its reports, they mention several member states, including Hungary and Poland, in the context of “accusations of corruption tantamount to political libel”. The committee is sending a delegation to Hungary next week, he said. The report of the visit “is expected to perpetuate the farfetched accusations and repulsive, politically motivated insinuations repeated countless times in the past years,” Deutsch said. Hungary is a “poster child in fighting corruption”, with the most detailed anti-graft legislation in place in the EU, Deutsch said. He said he hoped that the committee will acknowledge that Hungary has the strictest anti-corruption legislation in the EU, and will recommend it for other member states to follow in the report, he said.
Photo credit: fidesz-eu.hu