Government critic expects zero financial transfers from the EU
July 1st, 2023A veteran economist predicts that the European Union will permanently withhold EU funds from Hungary.
In an interview with Index, economist Péter Róna said Hungary ‘won’t get a single cent from the European Union’, because the EU considers the Hungarian government a kind of alien body in the community. Mr Róna left Hungary with his parents in 1956, at the age of 14, and made a banker’s career in the United States and Great Britain. He is a visiting professor at Blackfriars’ College in Oxford. He has been a strong critic of PM Orbán’s government for all its 13 years and was put forward as an opposition candidate for President of the Republic last year. The 81-year-old professor told Index that ‘the political, juridical and social setup in Hungary is not in conformity with the European context’ but the Union initially hoped that Hungarians would change course. Professor Róna suggests that the turning point was last year’s third consecutive landslide electoral victory by PM Orbán. At that point, he suggests, the European Union decided that although the bulk of Hungarian society was satisfied with the government, ‘we are not, and won’t send money to those people anymore’. He predicts that in the absence of EU transfers, Hungary will go bankrupt.