Prime Minister Péter Magyar said in Brussels on Wednesday that the Tisza government would work in the negotiations on the European Union’s next seven-year budget to secure dedicated EU funds for strengthening the country’s border fence and border protection.
Speaking to Hungarian journalists ahead of a two-day European Council summit opening on Thursday, Magyar said the government took a firm position on migration and would continue to strengthen the protection of Hungary’s borders and hence Europe’s external borders.
He vowed that what had happened under the Orbán government, when thousands of people convicted in final judgements of people smuggling were released from Hungarian prisons, would not happen again.
He said his government is in talks with the European Commission and member states to close the procedure launched against Hungary under the Orbán government — which carries a daily 1 million euro migration fine — as soon as possible.
“Hungary has so far lost roughly one billion euros so far”, he said, blaming the Orbán government for failing to create regulations that complied with EU law “to protect Europe’s external borders and the Hungarian border”.
Concerning the summit’s planned debate on Ukraine, Magyar said Ukraine’s adoption on Monday of its law on education in minority languages was a historic breakthrough that may open the way to putting Hungary-Ukraine relations “on a new footing”.
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“After long, long years of inaction and frozen relations”, he said, the Tisza government’s negotiations had achieved a breakthrough, and the Hungarian minority living in Transcarpathia could at last regain its educational rights, and in the future also its language-use rights, its rights before the authorities and its political rights.
Magyar said the meeting he is to hold with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Brussels on Friday could lead to a further meeting between them in Berehove (Beregszász) this autumn.
The aim of the meeting will be to review the current state of bilateral ties and discuss further cooperation, he said, noting they are expected to hold a short one-on-one discussion.
Magyar said he wanted to confirm at the highest political level a ten-point political agreement reached with Ukraine at expert and lower political levels.
He said he expects Zelensky to reaffirm that the obligations undertaken in the agreement will be met on schedule, particularly regarding national minorities’ language-use rights, educational rights and rights before the authorities.
If Hungarian political, cultural, or church organisations in Transcarpathia reported problems, he said, he expected the Ukrainian authorities to be ready to resolve them, adding this was especially important for a country seeking EU membership, as national minority rights must be guaranteed to a European standard.
He said the agreement benefited not only Hungarians but also the other national minorities living in Ukraine, including Romanians and Poles, as it contributed to restoring their rights.
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The prime minister emphasised that the agreement was backed by every Transcarpathian Hungarian political organisation, church, cultural organisation, and the university. Community representatives, he noted, had long called for an improvement in Hungary-Ukraine relations, since it served the security and peaceful life of Hungarians in Transcarpathia. “[Former PM] Viktor Orbán didn’t hear this; he didn’t want to hear it,” Magyar added.
He noted that in 2024 he visited the bombed children’s hospital in Kyiv and then travelled to Transcarpathia, where he met many local Hungarians. The government has kept in contact with the Transcarpathian Hungarian organisations, which took part in preparing the present agreement, ever since, he added.
As regards the EU’s next post-2027 budget, Magyar welcomed that under the proposal drafted by the Irish presidency of the Council of the EU, the amount recommended for Hungary has not been cut and member states’ contribution obligations have not risen. The EU budget’s total may decrease, he explained, but not in areas of importance to Hungary, such as cohesion policy and the common agricultural policy.
Concerning the planned council debate on European competitiveness, he said Europe’s competitiveness had so far been “declining in a straight line”. He said the trend would hopefully reverse, adding that given the energy crisis and soaring energy prices across Europe, member states wanted concrete steps from the EC on “reining in price rises” and helping businesses and households.
On EU enlargement, Magyar said talks with Montenegro were expected to conclude, and there was “light at the end of the tunnel” for other candidate countries, including North Macedonia, Albania and Serbia. This did not mean that Serbia, for example, was very close to accession, he said, but progress could be expected, which was in Hungary’s interest given the ethnic Hungarian minority living in the country.
Magyar welcomed the EU Council decision closing the conditionality procedure launched against Hungary in 2022, saying the document was “worth 4.2 billion euros to the Hungarian people and Hungarian companies”. A further portion of the funds frozen over rule-of-law problems and corruption under the Orbán government could now reach Hungary and the Hungarian people, he said.
“Both the sums released earlier and this amount, as well as sums to be released in the future, will provide enormous help in the coming years to restart the Hungarian economy, to boost Hungary’s competitiveness and, ultimately, to deliver a significant rise in the living standards of the Hungarian people,” he said.
Magyar said Hungary had twice lost one billion euros in EU funds because of the previous government’s failures. The Hungarian people and businesses could not be blamed for the Orbán government’s failure to meet the necessary conditions, he said: it had instead spent public money on hate-mongering posters. The prime minister said he stood by his position that Hungary must be compensated for the lost support.
In the negotiations on the seven-year EU budget, he said, the aim was for Hungary to secure additional resources equal or close in value to the sum lost earlier, and there was a realistic opportunity to do so. This could be achieved through financing various projects or by increasing the EU allocations earmarked for Hungary, he said.
The prime minister recalled that many had also considered the release of some 6 trillion forints in EU support impossible, but a summer-long round of negotiations and thorough preparation had ultimately made the funds accessible.
He said he expected similar efforts from the Hungarian government, the state’s representatives and the diplomats to secure compensation for the two billion euros lost earlier.
The negotiations had already produced progress, he said: compared with the proposal of the previous, Cypriot, EU presidency, the funds earmarked for Hungary had risen by around one billion euros. He called this a significant result at the current, early stage of the negotiations, while stressing that further efforts were needed.
On the Hungarian budget, Magyar said the government had earlier made its economic policy goals clear, citing a stable and sustainable budget, a reduction of the budget deficit, a lowering of the state debt where possible, and restarting economic growth. “In the Orbán government’s last four years there was no economic growth, but there was a soaring budget deficit, a badly planned budget and rising state debt. We will now do exactly the opposite,” he said.