EU affairs minister: Hungary EU presidency represents change

“The European Union is changing, and it should,” the minister said, arguing that as an EU member Hungary had a vested interest in the bloc’s success.

Boka said there was broad support for EU membership in Hungary just as there had been 20 years ago when the country joined the bloc, adding that there was no alternative to EU membership.

He said Hungary was bound to Europe both culturally and historically. “Our place is in Europe and in the EU,” he said, adding that Europeanness formed an integral part of modern Hungarian identity.

Hungary’s security, he said, could only be guaranteed if the country was part of a strong defence community, one of whose pillars was NATO and the other the EU.

He said that with Hungary’s open and export-oriented economy, it was “inconceivable” to achieve growth and development goals without an unlimited access to the common market.

Boka said there were no disagreements on Hungary’s EU membership within the government. EU membership, he added, did not mean “the end of history”, because as the world continues to change, so must relations.

Turning to the priorities of the Hungarian presidency, he mentioned the EU’s competitiveness. He said that whereas in 1992 the EU had accounted for more than 21 percent of the global economy, by 2022 this had shrunk to 14.8 percent. He said that to restore competitiveness it was critical to address demographic challenges, including guaranteeing a skilled workforce in the most important sectors, and ensuring the European economy’s access to raw materials and affordable energy. Europe’s capital market, he said, lagged behind that of the United States in terms of development, and this led to a competitive disadvantage.

Boka called the EU’s post-pandemic Resilience and Recovery Facility (RRF) the “biggest failure of recent years”, arguing that its implementation had been too drawn out and slow, and its administrative burdens were too high. The implementation of the green transition, he added, could also be considered a failure because it was still impossible to tell what kinds of financial resources the “road to climate neutrality” required and what its economic effects would be.

The Hungarian presidency considers it a priority to adopt a new competitiveness pact focused on industrial transition, the management of labour and demographic problems, investment in innovation and skills as well as the renewal of funding, Boka said. He said the EU’s competitiveness would be a main topic at the Nov 8 informal summit of EU leaders in Budapest.

Meanwhile, Boka underlined the importance of developing the EU’s cohesion policy in a way that guarantees that it is capable of helping less developed regions catch up with the rest of the bloc.

He noted that the EU is set to begin planning its next multi-year budget during the Hungarian presidency. He said plans were to shift financing from traditional policies to new policies that boost competitiveness. He said this would also mean that the EU would finance policies that favour member states with a higher level of development, which would leave fewer resources available in terms of real value, and access to them would be even more closely linked to the fulfilment of the political criteria set by the European Commission.

The minister said it was also important for the Hungarian presidency to achieve “tangible results” on EU enlargement.