All Legislative Conditions Met for Accessing RRF Funds

The government has met all the legislative conditions for accessing the funds of the European Union's Recovery and Resilience Facility, Transportation and Investment Minister Dávid Vitézy said in Budapest on Monday, at a press conference on a HUF 11 billion trolley bus development.

"Hungary has met all milestones and super milestones, so we will bring home 100% of the European Union money, on which the political agreement between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Prime Minister Péter Magyar was reached in Brussels a few months ago," Dávid Vitézy said.

So, everything necessary to bring home the full EUR 10 billion of original funds, and thus the additional EUR 6 billion of frozen cohesion funds affected by the conditionality procedure, has been accomplished, he said. So in total, Hungary will access European Union funding of HUF 5,500 billion-6,000 billion, depending on the exchange rate, he added.

The minister noted that Monday, August 31, was the deadline for member states to use the EU's temporary instrument to support recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. He said the government had been working in recent months to ensure that all EUR 16 billion would serve useful purposes and Hungary's development. The necessary legislative conditions that have been met do not include anything "about either Ukraine, or any issue related to the way of life of Hungarians, or about migration," Dávid Vitézy pointed out.

"With all the milestones achieved, it is now clear that they have been lying and deceiving Hungarians all along, and they would have caused enormous damage if they had been able to continue this, as Hungary would have lost" the funding of EUR 16 billion, the minister said.

On the relationship between the previous government and the capital, Dávid Vitézy stated that the government had been "at war with its own capital."

He emphasized that this will be changed as there are many opportunities and tasks for cooperation between the capital and the government.

The government decided at its meeting last week to re-establish the Budapest Public Development Council, Dávid Vitézy said. The council will be a parity-based cooperative body with meaningful powers and capabilities, instead of the previous informal operation, he added.

Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony said the shared goal of the city and the government was to implement an urban policy based on the principle of partnership.