Hungary’s €16.4 billion reform deadline

By the end of August, Péter Magyar's Brussels breakthrough will either begin turning into cash or start disappearing from Hungary's account. The Hungarian prime minister secured a deal with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on May 29 to unblock three frozen funding streams: €10 billion from the RRF, the EU's post-pandemic investment fund financed through common borrowing; €4.2 billion in cohesion funds, the regional development money frozen over rule-of-law concerns; and €2.2 billion linked to academic freedom. None of it moves unless Hungary passes a long list of judicial and anti-corruption reforms before the summer is out.

From handshake to bank transfer

Finance Minister Kármán András set out the route from political agreement to payment (Telex, HVG): the Commission approves Hungary's modified recovery plan in June, EU finance ministers vote in July, Hungary carries out the reforms and files payment requests in September, and the Commission then has two months to check compliance. The first payments could arrive in late autumn 2026 at the earliest.

The real deadline is August 31. Under the RRF regulation, the milestones must be completed by then, not merely promised. Anything not disbursed by December 31 is gone for good. Hungary has already lost €2 billion that expired at the end of 2024 and 2025, after the Orbán government refused to meet the attached conditions.

Ten milestones in ninety days

The Commission attached 27 "super-milestones" to Hungary's plan, meaning special conditions designed to protect EU money and the rule of law. Orbán's government completed 17. Ten are still outstanding. The most difficult go to the machinery Orbán spent more than a decade building: judicial independence, the right to have anti-corruption inaction reviewed by the courts, and transparency in public procurement (Portfolio, Transparency International Hungary).

Two conditions carry particular political weight. Hungary must join the European Public Prosecutor's Office, the EU body that investigates fraud against the Union's budget. It must also remove government-aligned trust foundations from control of universities, a change that requires a constitutional amendment. Magyar's Tisza party has a two-thirds majority, so the votes are there in theory. The amendment has still not passed.

The Polish precedent

Brussels has seen this kind of moment before. After Poland changed government in late 2023, the Commission released funds before the judicial reforms were finished. Two years later, Poland's constitutional tribunal is still blocking reform, and the European Parliament said in May 2026 that many recommendations "remain unimplemented."

German MEP Daniel Freund drew the lesson sharply while pointing to the Polish precedent: "Magyar goes home today with a promise, not a suitcase full of money." Handelsblatt reported that von der Leyen now wants "real reforms, not just declarations." Germany and five other net contributors, Sweden, Austria, Finland, the Netherlands and Estonia, are pushing for stricter conditions across EU budget spending.

A court case that could change the rules mid-game

Over all of this sits Case C-225/24 at the Court of Justice of the EU. The European Parliament sued the Commission for releasing cohesion funds to Hungary in 2023 without properly checking whether the conditions had been met. In February 2026, the court's Advocate General, a senior legal adviser whose opinions are followed roughly two-thirds of the time, recommended annulling that decision. A ruling is expected later this year.

Magyar has advantages Poland's Donald Tusk did not have: a constitutional supermajority and a Commission more wary after being criticised for leniency. He may yet pass every reform on the list. But if the Court of Justice decides that the Commission's own disbursement mechanism was unlawful, Hungary could meet the milestones and still find the money sitting in Brussels.