Metsola Weighs Hungary €10bn Lawsuit

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola told MEPs on Wednesday that she would consult the full chamber on two Hungary files: the Article 7 rule-of-law procedure, the EU treaty route for sanctioning governments that breach democratic standards, and Parliament’s separate lawsuit against the European Commission over billions released to Budapest in 2023 (Telex). The move follows a request from Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar, who says the case now risks blocking EU money needed by his reform government, not Viktor Orbán’s (The Straits Times/Reuters).

The lawsuit carries the teeth

Article 7 gets the politics. Parliament opened Hungary’s Article 7(1) file in September 2018, putting Budapest formally under EU scrutiny over democratic backsliding. The file remains stuck in the Council’s ongoing work, because moving to the harsher stage requires unanimity among EU leaders. One government can stop it. In April 2024, MEPs urged the Council, where national governments sit, to act. Nothing followed. Article 7 has kept Hungary politically labelled. It has not cost Budapest money.

The court case is more serious. Case C-225/24 before the EU Court of Justice challenges the Commission’s December 2023 decision to release roughly €10.2bn in Hungarian cohesion funds, the EU money meant to narrow economic gaps between regions (CURIA). Parliament’s argument is that the Commission unfroze the funds without first proving that Hungary had really carried out the required judicial and anti-corruption reforms.

For Malta, where rule-of-law questions are never theoretical after Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination and the public inquiry that found the state bore responsibility, the mechanism matters as much as the politics. If EU institutions say money depends on reform, the test is whether reform is working, not whether the press conference sounds different.

In February 2026, Advocate General Tamara Ćapeta backed Parliament. She advised the Court to annul the Commission’s decision, saying the reforms had to be "in force and effectively applied" before the money moved. Advocate General opinions are not binding, but the Court often follows them. If it does so here, Commission decisions to release frozen funds would become reviewable in court, not merely contestable in political speeches. That would change how conditionality, the tying of EU funds to reform requirements, operates across the Union.

The trap of rewarding promises

Magyar’s case is not frivolous. He defeated Orbán in April 2026, agreed a €16.4bn reform-for-funds framework with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in May, and says the lawsuit now targets money his government needs to deliver anti-corruption commitments. Those include joining the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, the EU body that investigates cross-border fraud. Dropping the case, he argues, would remove a legal cloud hanging over reforms already in motion (The Straits Times/Reuters).

The Commission has used this pattern before. It released or mapped out funds for Hungary under Orbán in 2023, for Poland after Donald Tusk’s return in 2024, and for Magyar in 2026. In each case, it moved before independent verification showed that the reforms were working in practice, not just written into law. Parliament’s Hungary rapporteur, Tineke Strik, has said an October fact-finding mission would assess results before any proposal to withdraw Article 7 (Telex). Dropping the lawsuit before that visit, and before the Court rules, would say that a change of government is enough to soften legal scrutiny.

That message would travel beyond Budapest. Previous To Brief reporting found that Poland’s government saw Hungary’s shift as a practical route to unblock European Peace Facility reimbursements and Ukraine-aid coordination that Orbán had obstructed. If conditionality can be reversed whenever a more acceptable government takes office, the tool becomes weaker before its next serious test.

What stays open

The Court of Justice has not ruled in C-225/24. If Parliament withdraws the case before judgment, the precedent on whether such Commission decisions can be reviewed disappears. If the Court annuls the Commission’s decision after Parliament has politically stepped back, both institutions inherit a legal problem: a ruling that the money should not have been released, with neither institution clearly placed to act on it under TFEU Article 266, the treaty rule requiring EU bodies to comply with Court judgments.

Magyar may well be serious about reform. The EU still has no reliable way to separate real reform from performed reform until the facts are tested. Parliament’s October visit is the first point at which that can happen. Magyar is asking MEPs to put down the legal weapon before they have checked whether the target has changed.