We should deal with curbing the epidemic and restarting life and the economy, not with meaningless ideological debates

The European Parliament (EP) voted today on a resolution on the revised Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and the Recovery Fund. According to the EP, the next financial framework will play a key role in boosting European economies after the crisis.

In his plenary speech, Fidesz MEP Andor Deli confirmed that the next Multiannual Financial Framework will play a key role in boosting national economies after the crisis and therefore needs to be ambitious and of the right size. However, given the severity of the crisis, the Recovery Fund that the Commission intends to set up is also needed, but not at the expense of traditional EU policies (i.e., Cohesion Funds and Common Agricultural Policy), which have already proven their worth on several occasions.

MEP Enikő Győri, as a member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the EP, emphasized that Hungary has achieved outstanding economic success in recent years and is now at the forefront of the fight against the epidemic; thanks to this success, the crisis caused by the coronavirus is expected have less of an impact on the Hungarian economy than the EU average. Proportionately, we have mobilized the third-largest amount of resources in the EU to overcome the crisis. We will create a new job to replace every job lost. However, this positive performance should not be materially disadvantaged at the EU level. The Union must not reward the irresponsible management of others or their mismanagement of the epidemic from the resources intended for recovery.

MEP Tamás Deutsch, as a member of the Committee on Budgetary Control and on Regional Development of the EP, pointed out that promoting progress and economic growth through cohesion policy will be key in the aftermath of the crisis. The flexibility recently introduced in the use of cohesion funding must be maintained at least in the first years of the new Multiannual Financial Framework.

However, MEP Deutsch, Head of the Fidesz-KDNP delegation, drew attention to the fact that in the text just adopted, the EP had introduced two hitherto rare innovations. On the one hand, it strongly criticizes the European Commission for refraining from presenting misleading data when presenting a recovery strategy in order to preserve the EU’s credibility and for the use of “financial magic” and questionable multiplier effects. On the other hand, this newly adopted resolution endorses the standpoint of more rational MEPs when it says that in the fight against the economic crisis affecting the whole of Europe, the focus should not be on unnecessary party political debates but on the relaunch of life and the economy, on overcoming the consequences of the crisis.