Hungary’s €10 billion hurdle

The story now travelling through European press is that Hungary is close to unlocking roughly €10 billion in EU recovery money. That may yet happen. But the public record, as it stands, says something more limited: Budapest says the work is nearly done. The European Commission has not assessed the reforms, has not received a payment request, and has not approved a single euro for release (Commission Hungary page, Commission briefing, 30 July).

Council approval is a doorway, not a bank transfer

The EU Council, where member-state governments take decisions, approved Hungary's revised recovery plan on 10 July (Council). That decision opened access, in principle, to about €6.5 billion in grants and €3.5 billion in loans under the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the EU's post-pandemic fund that pays governments only after agreed reforms have been completed and checked (RRF Regulation).

What it did not do was transfer the money. Hungary must first clear 27 "super milestones" by 31 August, most of them covering corruption controls, transparency and judicial independence (Euronews, HVG). Budapest then has to submit a formal payment request by the end of September. Only after that does the Commission begin its assessment. It said so plainly on 30 July: no formal assessment starts until the request is in (Commission briefing).

Hungary's Transport and Investment Ministry told Euronews that about two-thirds of the commitments have already been completed. That may turn out to be right. But "we are finishing the job" is Budapest's claim. It is not yet a Commission finding.

Real reforms, unverified controls

Péter Magyar's government has moved quickly. Hungary published tougher audit rules on 7 August, making the EU's ARACHNE+ fraud-detection tool mandatory for all recovery-fund spending (Schoenherr). The Integrity Authority, the watchdog Budapest set up under EU pressure to examine public contracts for corruption risks, has launched a register of companies barred from procurement.

Those are real measures. The Commission's question is whether they add up to anti-corruption systems that actually work and can be verified, or whether they are deadline-driven fixes that could be softened once the immediate pressure passes.

That matters because part of the legal framework is already being tested. Act XVIII of 2026, the omnibus law covering transparency and energy reforms, remains under constitutional review (To Brief). If Hungary's Constitutional Court strikes down provisions before the Commission assesses them, the legal basis for some milestones could fall away. The Commission does not only check whether a reform was adopted. It checks whether it still exists in a usable form. A law passed and then hollowed out can fail the test just as clearly as a law never passed.

Hungary is not alone in facing that kind of late-stage scrutiny. The Commission has warned Romania that reversing a decarbonisation law already validated could have financial consequences (Adevarul). The message is meant to travel beyond Budapest.

The Commission's credibility is exposed

Brussels is under pressure from both sides. An Advocate General at the Court of Justice, a senior legal adviser whose opinions are not binding but often influence judgments, has already concluded that the Commission released frozen Hungarian funds too early in an earlier conditionality dispute (Ouest-France). The European Parliament sued over that decision.

If the Commission accepts weak evidence now because the deadline is tight, the RRF begins to look less like a pay-for-results fund and more like a political bargain. If it applies the rules firmly, it strengthens conditionality for every member state trying to close its plan before the facility expires.

The next factual answer belongs to the Commission, sometime after September: did Hungary prove the reforms work, or only that they were passed?