State Secretary Csaba Dömötör said the EU is requesting financial contributions from member states even as it is withholding funding Hungary is entitled.
Responding to a European Commission proposal for member states to contribute to a 50 billion euro support for the reconstruction and modernization of Ukraine over the next four years, Dömötör said that the EU had called for contributions because earlier support for war-torn Ukraine had left its budget “tens of billions of euros in the red”. “Most of the contributions, some 50 billion, would again be poured into Ukraine, but the rest would go towards covering skyrocketing interest rates and the inflation-adjusted salaries of Brussels bureaucrats,” Dömötör said in a video on Facebook. Modifying the EU’s budget requires a unanimous decision of member states, Dömötör said. He said he expected “an interesting and strange debate” on the issue since member states were now asked for extra contributions while Hungary had not yet received the EU funding it was entitled to.