EU funds 8 March 2024, 3:35pm

EU to settle HUF 30 billion invoice for Hungary

Portfolio

The European Commission has approved invoices for the green and digital transition, allowing Hungary to draw down another HUF 30 billion from cohesion funds, Finance Minister Mihály Varga announced on Friday.

euró euróbevezetés kohéziós forrás euróövezet

This time, €75.2 million (HUF 29.8 billion) of pre-financing was received for our green and digital switchover investments. These funds will be used under the Environmental and Energy Efficiency Operational Programme Plus (EEEOP or KEHOP Plus)," the finance minister said on Facebook.

This brings the total amount of funds drawn down from the 2021-2027 Cohesion Policy framework to €1.22 billion. As we reported last week, only €12.2 billion of Hungary's total €21.7 billion in Hungarian cohesion funding can be drawn by the Hungarian budget after a further €2 billion was released after thematic conditions were met.

So Hungary is now at a little over 5% of cohesion payments compared to the total envelope, and it has received 10% of the available amounts.

Mihály Varga also pointed out that with pre-financing Hungary is ahead of the majority of member states in terms of drawing from the framework budget, ranking 11th out of 27 countries. He said that since the end of December, more than 550 billion forints of funds have already been received.

Meanwhile, this item only marginally improves the dire fiscal situation if we look at the budget on a cash flow basis. By the end of February, the deficit was nearly 68% of the annual target, at over HUF 1,750 billion. Hungary is now getting a transfer from Brussels of 1.7% of that, but even if you take the ESA approach, this does not change the overall picture.