A bit of progress, well short of sufficient, reached at rule-of-law talks with the EU

HUNGARY - In Brief 01 Feb 2023 by Istvan Racz

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The good news is that talks on how to restore Hungary's access to new EU development funds apparently continue. Another piece of good news is that Hungary is reported to have made concessions, slowly moving towards meeting the requirements set by the EU in December. The bad news, for those who would like to see Hungary gaining access to the funds in question soon, is that Hungary is treating the issue as a bargain, making more of an organised retreat than just giving in to EU demands across-the-board. This way, negotiations may still last for quite long, despite both official statements and unofficial reports that both sides would like to achieve a breakthrough by end-March. A few days ago, Hungary's chief negotiator said in public that PM Orbán is fully in agreement with the removal of cabinet ministers from the boards of public interest trusts, the ones managing universities and research institutes, and this is supposed to be a game changer at the talks. However, he added that it is still to be clarified if state secretaries and their deputies can keep their similar positions or not. In our view, the latter is a problem, as the EU may insist, in principle, that all the potentially conflicted leading politicians, including cabinet ministers, state secretaries and their deputies, government commissioners, mayors of local governments and parliamentary representatives stay out of public interest trust boards. Similarly, it is not known yet if the EU Commission has only this problem with the trusts or not, as for example, previously they also saw as a problem that these trusts are legally not bound by the general rules of Hungary's public procurement process. And even if ...