Presenting an overview of the EU’s upcoming seven-year financial framework for 2028–2034, Minister Bóka said the draft indicates a significant shift away from cohesion policy and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) toward expenditures labeled as competitiveness and defense. At the same time, the Commission is proposing major structural and procedural changes to the budget, which it says are intended to simplify operations and increase flexibility.
The Minister stressed that adopting the long-term financial framework raises both procedural and substantive questions. A genuine political consensus among member states on the fundamental issues is essential before any agreement can be reached, he said. “Strategic debates must take place and decisions must be matured. That has not happened so far,” Minister Bóka stated, warning that advancing article-by-article negotiations without resolving core political questions risks creating the impression that key issues have already been decided.
He argued that it is in the V4’s interest for quality, not speed, to guide the budget negotiations. Strategic questions should precede technical discussions, and nothing should be considered agreed until all elements are settled, he said.
Minister Bóka emphasized that Hungary insists on maintaining cohesion policy and the CAP as separate, independent policies, and that the CAP must retain its two-pillar structure. For Visegrád farmers, preserving the current level of agricultural support is a matter of vital importance, he added. Without CAP resources, the viability of European agriculture cannot be ensured, and adopting the framework in its current form would amount to abandoning agriculture as a strategic sector, which he described as a historic mistake.
Turning to the financing side of the proposed budget, Minister Bóka said that taking on new common EU debt is not an acceptable solution for Hungary.
He also reiterated Hungary’s opposition to maintaining or expanding the current rule-of-law conditionality mechanisms, which he said have been used as political pressure tools against Hungary. While Hungary remains open to strengthening the protection of the EU’s financial interests, conditionality is not an appropriate instrument for that purpose, he said.
Minister Bóka further highlighted the importance of V4 cooperation, recalling the group’s joint stance on migration since 2015. He said external border protection should be recognized as a form of solidarity and that the same standards must apply to all external borders of the EU.
In his welcoming remarks, Zoltán Tessely, Chairman of Parliament’s Committee on European Affairs, underlined that cooperation within the V4 framework, now marking its 35th anniversary, should focus on what unites rather than divides the countries, as “together we are certainly stronger.”