We found out: Hungary vetoes the EU budget for seven years!

What is the scheduled schedule?

Following Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s warning letter on November 8 last week, none of the government speakers made it clear that the Hungarian government would veto regulations on the 7-year framework budget and own resources. Therefore, it could be concluded that the Hungarian government does not go beyond the financial perspectives of the EU for the next seven years so as not to link the EU funds to the rule of law.

However, our information today differs from this conclusion. At a meeting in Brussels this afternoon, the German Presidency is asking Member States for a political resolution to say: what is their political position on the 3 laws in question.

According to our information, at this event the Hungarian government provided both the 7-year framework budget (MFP) and the so-called owner of the Own Resources Decision (ORD).

As the regulation of the rule of law does not require unanimity, it is not an official veto, but a negative position of Hungary (and Poland), but this regulation may still come into force.

Following a testamentary vote by the German Presidency this afternoon, it is still not entirely clear how things will go, they are expected to collapse:

• The Rule of Law Regulation will enter into force, essentially with the approval of a qualified majority of Member States, on 1 January 2021 (unless the following two questions are opened)
• for the other two regulations, the member states cannot make a formal (legal) decision before this Wednesday, and then the next day there will be an EU summit with video conference
• Whereas Member States will not be able to take a formal decision on the MFF until the European Parliament has given its formal consent and the EP plenary session will only take place next week, so it is likely that the MFF will be formally approved before next week; it cannot be born. From this, even the decision on the ORD could be taken as early as this Wednesday (today, in addition to the political resolution on the ORD, it will be decided that the decision on the coronavirus will be made by the member states in a written procedure).

What follows from the Hungarian (and probably Polish) veto?

All EU budget decision making will come to a halt and there will be enormous pressure on the two Member States to allow the other 25 Member States not to hold on to EU budget decisions when the coronary virus epidemic is rampant and needed. money for crisis management as soon as possible.

Parallel to the pressure, an agreement could be launched in the background on how the rule of law could be modified so that it is already acceptable to the two Member States, so that at least all Member States reach an agreement on an MFF that requires unanimity. Until this happens, the EU budget decided for 2020 will move one twelfth of a month from 2021.

If, on the other hand, the EP and several northern Member States do not enter into a substantial weakening of the rule of law (and they are unlikely to do so), we can hope to proceed as Viktor Orbán suggested in early October:, so Hungary can be left out. This means, therefore, that, as we have pointed out, we would prefer to give up € 16 billion in recovery resources, but that we should not be subject to the strict conditionality of the rule of law. The problem is that at the moment the same set of conditions applies to both the MFP and the ORD, so even in this case it is not clear what will happen to the MFP and when we can get money from it next time. . Until then, from the 2014-2020 cycle, we will receive a twelfth of the EU funds allocated to Hungary for 2020 (approximately € 4.5 billion) from 2021.

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