Do not make Hungarian farmers and regions pay the price of war!

At yesterday’s meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgets, Johannes Hahn, the Commissioner responsible for the budget, presented the draft EU budget for 2023. The European Commission plans to commit €185.6 billion and pay €166.3 billion in total in 2023. This will be complemented by €130.7 billion in payments under the NextGenerationEU programme. Fidesz MEP Andor Deli said that Hungarian farmers and regions should not be made to pay the price of war, and therefore the Common Agricultural Policy and regional development funds should not be cut in 2023.

MEP Andor Deli said in his speech that “the 2023 EU budget should not be an ordinary budget. It must be a budget that supports and protects all essential sectors of the European economy, in particular agriculture and regional development. The level of support from the EU budget must be maintained and not reduced to the benefit of newly created crisis funds.”

According to the MEP, the budget, which is a record budget, does not respond to many of the challenges that the EU and the Member States will have to face in 2023. “The war in Ukraine means that the market for wheat and other cereals remains unstable and volatile. Therefore, we need to start talking about food self-sufficiency in Europe. We need to build an even stronger, more resilient agricultural sector, with sufficient EU support for our farmers. The same applies to cohesion funds. It is vital that regional development funds are paid out as soon as possible,” the MEP said.

MEP Andor Deli added: “The EU budget must contribute to tackling the so-called ‘energy poverty’, which is increasing due to rising energy prices. The EU must not turn a blind eye to this, because although it is summer now, winter is coming.”