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Gulyás: Linking EU funds to judiciary reform is nonsensical

Gergely Gulyás said that if EU funding will be withheld from Hungary at all, it will be because of the EU’s objections to the child protection law.

Gergely Gulyás, Head of the Prime Minister's Office, said linking payments of the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) to “judiciary reform” in Hungary is “nonsensical”. The Hungarian judiciary reform was concluded nine years ago in perfect coordination with the European Commission, and so the condition is actually a criticism of the previous Commission rather than the government, Gergely Gulyás said. An agreement on the recovery funding is “up to the Commission … but our experiences in the past few days are not good”, he said. Since education is in the hands of the member states, the EC’s argument is “extremely weak,” he said.

According to MTI, Gulyás said that if EU funding will be withheld from Hungary at all, it will be because of the EU’s objections to the child protection law rather than risk of corruption as stated in the European Union’s recent report on the rule of law in Hungary. Although Hungary’s EU membership “has no alternative”, the government rejects EU institutions’ attempts at “stealthy power grabs” and to claw competencies from member states, he said. Hungary, among other member states in central European and elsewhere, rejects the EU’s Fit for 55 climate protection plan and stands by the view that the largest polluters, rather than EU citizens, should bear the costs of climate protection, Gulyás said.