Hungary welcomes EC’s announcement on unlocking cohesion funds

Tibor Navracsics, Regional Development Minister, has welcomed the European Commission’s announcement on unlocking some of Hungary’s cohesion funds, saying that Hungary could now start implementing several of its goals. He reacted to the announcement that “Hungary has adopted reforms related to judicial independence which means that part of the Cohesion Policy funding would no longer be blocked, and therefore Hungary may start claiming reimbursements of up to around 10.2 billion euros”. “We can be proud that after tough talks over another one year, the European Commission has acknowledged the fulfilment of the horizontal enabling condition which allows Hungary to access some 4,000 billion forints in EU resources,” Navracsics said on Facebook. He said the EC’s decision would allow Hungary to use cohesion and the recovery funding for purposes that would strengthen the Hungarian economy and “make Hungarian people happier”.