Magyar seeks €10bn EU funds unlock before August deadline
Peter Magyar, Hungary's prime minister-in-waiting, arrived in Brussels on Wednesday for his first formal engagement with the European Union's top leadership. The meeting carries a hard deadline: when his government takes office next month, it will have until the end of August to satisfy the European Commission that Hungary has met the rule-of-law conditions required to release €10bn from the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the EU's pandemic-era investment instrument. Miss that window and the money is gone for good.
The €10bn at stake is the remainder of Hungary's allocation under the Recovery and Resilience Facility, a €723.8bn programme designed to help member states modernise their economies after the pandemic. Hungary's full allocation was €10.4bn in grants and €5.8bn in loans, but the Commission froze disbursement in 2022 after triggering the rule-of-law conditionality mechanism for the first time. The mechanism, adopted in 2020, allows the EU to suspend payments to a member state where breaches of the rule of law affect the sound financial management of the budget or the protection of the Union's financial interests.
In total, €18bn in cohesion and recovery funds were withheld during Viktor Orban's final years. The Commission identified twelve remedial measures covering judicial independence, anti-corruption frameworks, academic freedom and the rights of LGBTQ+ people. Orban's government passed some legislative changes in late 2023, enough for the Commission to propose releasing €10.2bn in cohesion funds in December, but the recovery funds remained blocked pending further judicial reforms. The August deadline is baked into the regulation: commitments must be made by 31 August 2026, after which uncommitted amounts are cancelled.
Magyar has not yet published a detailed legislative programme, but he has identified four priority areas where his cabinet will push reforms to satisfy the Commission's remaining conditions. He has not named them publicly in detail, though they are understood to centre on strengthening the independence of the prosecution service, guaranteeing the autonomy of the Constitutional Court, reinforcing anti-corruption safeguards in public procurement, and restoring academic freedom at universities. The Commission's 2023 assessment noted that while Hungary had amended laws on the nomination of judges and the status of the prosecution service, the practical independence of these institutions remained unproven.
"There is no time to waste," Magyar said in a statement before the Brussels visit. His team has already held two rounds of technical talks with Commission officials in recent weeks, an unusual step for an incoming administration. The speed reflects the arithmetic: even if the new government submits a revised recovery plan in May or June, the Commission's assessment, the Council's implementing decision and the legal commitment of funds all take weeks. Any slippage risks pushing the decision past August.
Beyond the domestic reform agenda, EU leaders are watching for a shift in Hungary's foreign policy. Under Orban, Budapest became the bloc's most consistent sceptic of military aid to Ukraine and of Ukraine's EU accession path. Hungary blocked the €90bn loan package for Ukraine for months, arguing that the funds should not be raised through joint EU borrowing. It also stalled the European Peace Facility reimbursements that compensate member states for weapons sent to Kyiv, leaving roughly €6.5bn in outstanding claims. Last week, with Orban's government in caretaker mode, the Council adopted the loan package and a 14th sanctions package against Russia without Hungarian opposition.
Magyar has signalled a different approach. On Tuesday he announced plans to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in early June in Berehove, a city in Ukraine's Zakarpattia region that borders Hungary and is home to an estimated 80,000 ethnic Hungarians. The choice of location is deliberate: it underscores Hungary's interest in the rights of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine, a long-standing irritant in bilateral relations, while also demonstrating a willingness to engage directly with Kyiv. EU officials expect Magyar to lift the veto on opening accession negotiations with Ukraine, a step the European Council agreed in principle in December 2023 but which requires unanimous consent to launch the formal screening process.
The Berehove meeting carries domestic political weight for Magyar. The Hungarian minority in western Ukraine has been a recurrent theme in Hungarian politics, with Orban's government funding cultural institutions and offering simplified naturalisation to ethnic Hungarians abroad. Kyiv has at times viewed this as interference, particularly after Ukraine's 2017 education law restricted minority-language schooling. Magyar's decision to hold his first meeting with Zelenskyy in a Hungarian-majority city signals that he intends to keep the minority issue on the agenda but within a cooperative framework. It also gives him a tangible deliverable to show Hungarian voters: a prime minister who can talk to Kyiv without the ideological baggage that characterised Orban's encounters.
Von der Leyen's reaction to Magyar's April 12 election victory was notably warm. "Europe's heart is beating stronger in Hungary tonight," she wrote on social media, adding that the result made the bloc "stronger, more united." Antonio Costa, who took over as European Council president in December 2024, said he looked forward to "close" cooperation. The contrast with the frosty relations of the Orban years is deliberate: the EU wants to lock in the new government's reform momentum before domestic politics complicates it. Magyar's Tisza party won a landslide, but it governs with a two-thirds majority that includes former Fidesz defectors and a heterogeneous coalition of centre-right, liberal and green forces. Keeping that coalition together while passing controversial judicial reforms will test his parliamentary management.
Magyar's room for manoeuvre is not unlimited. The Hungarian parliament's two-thirds supermajority, required for constitutional amendments and key judicial laws, depends on a coalition that spans from the centre-right to the green-left. Some Tisza MPs are former Fidesz loyalists who supported Orban's judicial overhaul; others campaigned explicitly on reversing it. The four reform areas Magyar has identified will likely require constitutional changes, meaning he needs virtually every coalition vote. Meanwhile, Fidesz retains a powerful media apparatus and local government network that will portray any concession to Brussels as capitulation.
The economic context adds pressure. Hungary's economy contracted by 0.9% in 2023 and grew only 0.6% in 2024, well below the EU average. Inflation peaked at 25% in early 2023 before falling to 3.7% by March 2026, but real wages have yet to recover their 2021 level. The €10bn in recovery funds, equivalent to roughly 5% of GDP, would finance energy efficiency renovations, digital infrastructure, water management and sustainable transport. Losing it would force the new government to either cut those programmes or find replacement funding in a tight fiscal environment. The Commission has made clear that no extension beyond August is possible under the current regulation.
For the Commission, the Magyar test is also institutional. The rule-of-law conditionality mechanism was designed precisely for a situation like Hungary's: a member state where systemic judicial weakening threatens the EU's financial interests. The mechanism survived a legal challenge by Hungary and Poland at the Court of Justice in 2022, but it has never been fully tested against a willing reformer. If the Commission accepts partial reforms and releases the funds, critics will argue it has lowered the bar. If it holds the line and the money is lost, the mechanism risks being blamed for punishing a government that inherited the problem. The Commission's 2024 rule-of-law report, due in July, will be the key benchmark.
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