BUDAPEST: Hungary’s government will not support the EU’s new seven-year budget unless Brussels unlocks all suspended funds, prime minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday.
In the past 15 years, the nationalist leader has clashed with Brussels over his policies on migration, curbing LGBTQ rights and what critics see as eroding democracy in Hungary. The EU has suspended billions of euros in funds earmarked for Hungary while a rule-of-law dispute drags on.
“The approval of the new seven-year budget requires unanimity and until we get the remaining (frozen) funds, there won’t be a new EU budget either,” Orban said in a speech at a summer university in the Romanian town of Baile Tusnad.