Strasbourg: After years in which the relationship between Budapest and the rest of the bloc seemed locked in mutual frustration, there are sudden signs of movement. The EU’s justice commissioner recently described Hungary as on a very clear and steadfast path to restoring the rule of law, with talks scheduled between the country’s new leadership and the Commission president aimed at releasing roughly 17 billion euros in funds frozen over corruption and rule-of-law concerns. Budapest, officials say, must satisfy the outstanding conditions by the end of August, with the first payments possibly arriving before the year is out.
The optimism is not universally shared. The money was withheld precisely because the Commission judged that Hungarian institutions could not be trusted to spend it cleanly, citing problems with public procurement, conflicts of interest, judicial independence and the weakness of anti-corruption enforcement. Unfreezing it requires evidence that those deficiencies have been genuinely repaired, not merely papered over before a deadline. The history of the file is one of partial gestures followed by backsliding, which has left many in the Parliament deeply sceptical.
That scepticism boiled over late last year, when members adopted a resolution sounding the alarm over what they called a deepening rule-of-law crisis. Civil society groups feeding into the Commission’s forthcoming annual report have been even harsher, noting that none of the recommendations from the previous year’s assessment were implemented and that several areas have deteriorated. Lobbying and revolving-door rules remain unreformed, asset declarations weak, and high-level corruption cases rarely pursued with vigour.
Media freedom has become a particular flashpoint. The Commission opened an infringement procedure after Hungary failed to apply the European Media Freedom Act, the bloc’s attempt to shield journalists and outlets from political capture. For critics, the state of the Hungarian media landscape is the clearest evidence that the underlying problem is structural rather than technical, and that releasing billions while the press remains constrained would reward exactly the behaviour the conditionality regime was built to deter.
The episode has fed a broader argument about how much discretion the Commission should hold over conditionality. Legal scholars have warned against letting funding decisions hinge on opaque political judgement, urging clearer, more predictable criteria so that neither release nor suspension looks like a bargain struck behind closed doors. As negotiations over the next long-term budget intensify, the design of that mechanism, and how insulated it is from horse-trading, has become one of the more consequential institutional questions facing the bloc.
For Hungary, the stakes are immediate. The frozen funds matter to an economy under strain, and a credible path to their release gives any government in Budapest a powerful incentive to deliver visible reforms. For the rest of the bloc, the case is a test of whether financial leverage can actually change behaviour or merely buy temporary compliance that evaporates once the cash arrives.
The coming months will settle little permanently but reveal a great deal. If concrete reforms materialise before the August deadline, the conditionality tools will have shown their worth. If the money flows on the strength of promises alone, the doubters will feel vindicated, and the bloc’s central enforcement instrument will look weaker than ever.
