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FM: Government’s Brexit adjustment reserve supports 63 companies

Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said winning support within the Brexit Adjustment Reserve was conditional on investments and preserving jobs.

The Hungarian government’s HUF 23 billion (EUR 61.7m) adjustment reserve for companies harmed by Brexit supports 63 companies.

Handing a support certification to Rovitex Homedeco, Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said winning support within the Brexit Adjustment Reserve was conditional on investments and preserving jobs. The government has pre-financed the tender, which opened in September and closed recently, as European Union funding will flow in between 2022 and 2025, he said. “We have never allowed Hungarians to be made to pay for events in world politics and economy they had nothing to do with, and Brexit is one of them,” he said, adding that Brexit was a “huge loss” for the EU and had brought about “grave strategic and economic challenges”. The UK used to produce 15 percent of the EU’s GDP and accounted for 13 percent of its population, he noted.

In the last decade marked by crises, the Hungarian government’s responses to the challenges consistently deviated from mainstream ones, “but they were also consistently successful”, he said. In response to the financial crisis, the government introduced radical tax cuts and job creation policies, and it countered migration pressure by strengthening national security, he said. During the coronavirus pandemic, the government focused on speeding up the vaccination drive and on saving jobs, which helped Hungary to “benefit from the status quo upheaval in global economy, and brought about economic records in 2021,” he said.

Photo credit: MTI