Reforms to increase judicial independence has been approved by parliament, but implications on the availability of EU grants remain unclear

HUNGARY - In Brief 04 May 2023 by Istvan Racz

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The National Assembly approved the government's reform package to increase the independence of courts yesterday, as required by the EU Commission for Hungary to gain access to a big part of its currently blocked development grant quotas from the EU. This came after a long series of detailed talks, during which representatives of the Commission and the government often negotiated specific texts of legal amendment that Hungary was to approve to get the funds in question. A few days ago, high-ranking government officials reported that the Commission had approved the detailed content of the judicial reform package at the technical level. They added that the stake is the freeing up of €13.2bn in grants, which is that part of the total €28bn of blocked EU funds (cohesion policy funds + the recovery fund) which does not fall under the ongoing rule-of-law procedure or the 27 so-called 'super-milestones' (read: required reform measures), of which the current judicial reform package represents only four items.One piece of genuine good news is that all this has been confirmed by high-ranking officials from the EU side as well. However, one remaining problem is that the real implications as to the availability of EU funds is still rather unclear. Following parliament's decision, the EU's budget commissioner, Johannes Hahn was quoted as saying that Hungary's decision MAY open the way for the freeing up of grants up to €13.2bn, yet a bit later the Commission's vice-president Vera Jourová, otherwise the EU commissioner for values and transparency, was quoted as saying that no-no-no, so far only a technical-level approval has been given, a political-level approval is still required, a...