Hungary has asked its partners in the European Union to find an “individual solution” to prevent a significant drop in cohesion funding in the 2014-2020 period, Hungarian state secretary of European affairs Eniko Gyori told reporters in Brussels on Tuesday.
In line with the EU’s draft financial framework 2014-2020, Hungary would be the country most affected by planned cuts in cohesion funding, Gyori said. The formula discussed now “fails to comply with the European treaties, the latest decision of the European Council and the cohesion policy’s logic that those in the biggest need should be helped,” she added.
Gyori said that the “friends of cohesion”, a group of 15 EU states including Hungary, adopted a position earlier today, declaring cohesion policy to be the biggest loser of the ongoing technical revision of the framework, with 5.5 billion euros less allocated for the cohesion funding.
European commissioner of financial programming and budget Janusz Lewandowski has also recognised that the draft fails to comply with the June position of the EU heads of state and government that cohesion policies should be considered a vital instrument in growth promotion.
Under the new financial framework, Hungary would get nearly 30 percent less in cohesion funds than it received during the 2007-2013 framework.
Hungary would all the more need an individual solution as it has made much less progress in convergence as it wished to, Gyori said.
