Colleagues of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Regional Policy have indicated suspected cartel activity related to the M4 motorway development to the Hungarian Government, which makes the EU financing of the project impossible – Deputy State Secretary for Development Policy Communication of the Prime Minister’s Office said on Tuesday.
Nándor Csepreghy stressed that the Government has still not given up on its ambition to make all county level municipalities – amongst them Szolnok as well – accessible via express roads. Answering a question of MTI, the Deputy State Secretary said that initially the Government has planned to finance the construction of the M4 motorway from EU funds, as it is a larger investment of over HUF 100 billion. In 2013, the European Commission had not accepted the Government’s plan to construct a motorway in the direction of Szolnok, therefore the cabinet has withdrawn the plan submitted, and has started the revision of the project in cooperation with the experts of the Commission in order to re-submit it to the body for approval.
Mr Csepreghy added that over the last one and a half years countless discussions have been conducted with the experts of the Commission, who were ensured of the possibility to continuously follow the development of the project. Experts of the Commission have indicated suspected cartel activity in the case of the M4 construction to the experts of the Government, as – according to EU law – if the value of an investment exceeds EUR 50 million, the approval of not only the member states, but also that of the European Commission is needed in order to make the project chargeable to EU funds later on – the Deputy State Secretary explained.
On 26 March, Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office János Lázár ordered an internal investigation, the results of which will be available by the end of April. Parallel to this, the National Infrastructure-development Ltd. has stopped the construction – Mr Csepreghy stated.