The Utilisation of EU Assistance Funds is Improving19 June 2012
During the last two years - until 1 April 2012 - the amount of funds received by Hungary from the Cohesion Funds increased significantly. According to the latest data of the European Commission, the government of Viktor Orbán could request EUR 5.1 billion from the available funds.
According to the quarterly figures of the European Commission, the government of Viktor Orbán could request EUR5.1 billion from the available funds. At the same time, between 2007 and 1 April 2010, only EUR 3.8 billion were received by Hungary, out of which one third – EUR 2.4 billion – was an advance from the European Commission that was independent from the work of the actual government.
In relation to this, László Surján, a politician from the Christian Democratic Party, emphasised: “If we don’t count the advance transferred by the Commission, the Gyurcsány-Bajnai governments could only use 5.5% or HUF 1.4 billion of the budget available for the period 2007-2013 during three years. In essence, they wasted one third of the available assistance budget without starting the development programmes. On the other hand, the government of Viktor Orbán significantly facilitated the developments by requesting 20% of the total budget available.”
“We strongly believe that this positive tendency will continue and we will be able to compensate for the irresponsible delays caused by the faulty development policies of previous Socialist governments. This is a tough and challenging task”, stated László Surján, Vice-President of the European Parliament.
“On the social-liberal side, many people forget that during the socialist governments, Gordon Bajnai was responsible for the distribution of EU assistance, first as a government commissioner, then as a minister. He is the one who was primarily responsible for the catastrophic request indicators during the period 2007-2010”, reminded the conservative politician.
The nine years available for requesting the funds made available during the period 2007-2013 ends at the end of 2015. Thus, Hungary has only four years left to mitigate the mistakes of the Gyurcsány-Bajnai governments. Knowing the performance of the government of Viktor Orbán, we have a serious chance to accomplish this.