During his press conference, János Lázár, Minister of State heading the Prime Minister's Office, stated that Hungary will not lose any EU development funds in the 2007-2013 financial framework, which has been held on Monday in Budapest.

Payments in all of the 14 operative programmes are continuous – so far 1507 bn HUF (€ 5 bn) has been issued to the applicants, this number will reach 1600 bn HUF by the end of the year. With this achievement, the Hungarian EU institutional framework achieved success, which was ‘unperceivable during the last years’. One of the main goal for the enacted changes in the system was to be able to pay out 2000 bn HUF (€ 6.6 bn) in 2014 to the successful tender applicants.

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In August, when the EU Development Policy has been transferred to the Prime Minister’s Office, 13 from 14 operative programmes have been suspended and there was a slight chance that 570 bn HUF (€ 1.9 bn) will be permanently lost form the 8200 bn HUF (€ 27 bn) 7 year budget. Since then, all the funds have been tied down and all the tenders have been published.

January will bring many changes, such as the National Development Agency will be dissolved, half of its former employees (leaders of the operative programmes and high ranking experts) will be transferred to the corresponding ministries. The others (central supervision and coordination) will start working at the Prime Minister’s Office. The final approval from the European Commission is expected in January, 2014, but the relevant Commissioner Johannes Hahn already gave his support to the proposed amendments.

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The revision of 46.000 already signed contracts has been commenced, 300 offshore or ‘unwilling to cooperate’ firms have been identified already, as the development funds intended for Hungary has to stay in Hungary, according to the Minister of State.

The new system will be organized, traceable, able to respond quickly and will serve the country’s interest in the future.

(Prime Minister’s Office)