Time is running out to unlock billions of euros in frozen funds earmarked for Hungary, and the pressure has moved from summit rooms into the committees where the European Parliament keeps watch over the bloc’s money. Members of the budgetary control and budgets committees spent part of this week probing the conditions attached to any release, wary of a repeat of past disputes over how much cash Budapest should receive and when.

The numbers explain the urgency. The Commission has withheld roughly €17 billion of the €27 billion earmarked for Hungary over rule-of-law and corruption concerns. The most exposed slice is €10.4 billion from the Recovery and Resilience Facility, money that Hungary risks losing outright if no agreement lands before the facility’s rules retire the funds at the end of August. A further €7.4 billion in cohesion money sits behind the same set of conditions.

To unlock the cash, Hungary must clear 27 “super-milestones” covering judicial independence, anti-corruption safeguards, academic freedom and media pluralism. The list has always been demanding, and for years the government treated it as a bargaining chip rather than a reform plan.

What has changed is the government itself. Péter Magyar took office after the April 2026 election, and his administration has begun moving on reforms that his predecessor resisted, including a parliamentary vote to abandon plans to quit the International Criminal Court. Officials in Brussels read those steps as a signal that Budapest now wants the money badly enough to meet at least some of the milestones.

Parliament, though, remains suspicious of how the Commission handles these decisions. Lawmakers have already taken the executive to court over an earlier partial release, arguing the money flowed before Hungary had truly earned it. An Advocate-General sided with Parliament earlier this year, and a Court of Justice ruling could arrive before the August cliff-edge, adding a legal twist to an already tense negotiation.

The committee discussions matter because they shape the political mood into which the Commission must sell any deal. If MEPs judge that Budapest has done too little, they can make life awkward through resolutions, budget scrutiny and public pressure, even where they lack a formal veto over the release.

For Magyar the stakes reach beyond accounting. Losing €10.4 billion would blow a hole in Hungary’s investment plans and hand domestic opponents a ready line of attack. For the Union, the episode is a live test of whether tying money to the rule of law actually changes behaviour, or simply delays a payout until the political weather turns. The mechanism’s design sits in the Commission’s budget pages.

The clock now does much of the talking. With weeks left before the deadline, Brussels and Budapest are locked in a negotiation where reforms, court rulings and a hard calendar all pull against one another, and where the frozen funds have become the clearest measure of trust between them.