János Lázár, the Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office announced that the calls for proposals for the entirety of the EU funds available for the period between 2014 and 2020 will be published by the end of the month, and 53 per cent of the total allocation of HUF 8,900 billion has already been contracted.
The Minister spoke about this at the Monday session of Parliament at the beginning of the debate on the utilisation of EU funds during the period between 2014 and 2020.
By his account, by virtue of the fact that the calls for proposals are being published in respect of the available funds already at this point in time, they have a five-year advantage compared with the previous cycle as the programmes will have to be closed in five years’ time, and there is therefore also scope to see what the Government is able and wishes to use the funds for.
According to Mr Lázár’s information, 53 per cent of the available allocation has already been contracted: there are contracts worth HUF 4,400 billion which will be distributed among 20 thousand awarded proposals. He indicated that 124 thousand proposals have been received, which also means that the funds are „labelled” well.
The Minister stressed that the EU institutions are doing their best to place the „domestic legs” of the EU’s net contributors at an advantage. During the period between 2007 and 2014, only 15 per cent of the funds were channelled to Hungarians, while in the rest of the cases, „the multinational capital pump” did its job well. During this cycle, 57-58 per cent of the funds will be channelled to the Hungarian SME sector, while the Government’s target stands at around 65 per cent.
He also said that the European Commission defines the rules of the utilisation of the funds, but the Government is doing everything it can so that civil-society organisations, businesses and municipalities may access the funds within the shortest possible time: they seek to accelerate, simplify and decentralise the process.
Mr Lázár further pointed out that the system of EU funds will, as expected, undergo major changes during the period beyond 2020 which will be more an era of repayable grants, and the percentage of non-repayable grants will decrease, while efforts will also be made to centralise the distribution of funds. According to Mr Lázár, this will mean that neither Parliament, nor the Government will have a say in the distribution of the funds because the relevant decisions will be adopted in Brussels.
Regarding corruption, Mr Lázár said: it would be a mistake to say that they are able to remove corruption from the institutional system completely. In his view, the opposition disputes the procurements of a group which accounts for perhaps five per cent, while in the case of the remaining 95 per cent, there are not even questions arising on the part of the opposition. Based on the EU’s statements, the percentage of disputed funds was around 8 per cent during the previous cycle, in contrast to just 3-5 per cent since 2014.
The Minister also said that the Government’s goals in 2017 are to reduce territorial differences, to reverse any fallback, to create the opportunity for full integration, and to address the problems of competitiveness. The available EU funds will help to achieve these goals as well. He remarked: a few percentage-point GDP growth is not enough. We need a continuous 5-6 per cent growth rate in order to have a chance of approaching Austrian living standards. But there are differences also within the country which must be reduced.
More than seven hours are available for the debate on the topic. After the Cabinet’s forty-minute opening speech, government party Members of Parliament will have four hours to state their opinion, while the opposition and independent Members of Parliament will have three hours in total to make their comments.