PM Orbán: EU mem­ber states may nego­ti­ate their own recov­ery pack­age deal

EU mem­ber states may nego­ti­ate their own recov­ery pack­age deal with­out EU insti­tu­tions if the debate on tying EU funds to the rule of law pre­vents the bloc from set­ting up the fund.

Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orbán has said EU mem­ber states may nego­ti­ate their own recov­ery pack­age deal with­out EU insti­tu­tions if the debate on tying EU funds to the rule of law pre­vents the bloc from set­ting up the fund.

Speak­ing ahead of a sum­mit of EU lead­ers, the prime min­is­ter not­ed that the agree­ment on the EU’s mul­ti­an­nu­al finan­cial frame­work for the 2021 – 2027 finan­cial cycle and the recov­ery pack­age to off­set the dam­age wreaked by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic had been com­pli­cat­ed by dis­agree­ments, as cer­tain mem­ber states want­ed to tie financ­ing to the issue of the rule of law.

PM Orbán said the Hun­gar­i­an gov­ern­ment main­tains that Europe should focus on man­ag­ing the coro­n­avirus cri­sis for now, and the pan­dem­ic res­cue pack­age should be made avail­able to mem­ber states in need of help as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. “We shouldn’t slow things down with debates on the rule of law.” But if these debates should hin­der the EU from launch­ing its Next Gen­er­a­tion recov­ery plan, EU mem­ber states still have the option of set­ting up the recov­ery fund out­side the con­fines of EU insti­tu­tions under an agree­ment of their own, he said.

Source: abouthun​gary​.hu