The small Politics Can Be Different (LMP) green party has decided to air new, concrete information on corruption within Hungary’s governing Fidesz party each week, and the first such example of the misuse of funds was presented on Thursday, complemented by a secret tape recording, as evidence. Ákos Hadházy, a former municipal politician in the town of Szekszárd, left Fidesz in 2013, after he became critical of massive corruption around the redistribution of tobacco concessions amongst party stalwarts. Mr. Hadházy is now behind LMP’s campaign to provide the population with concise, easily-understood weekly updates on examples of corruption within Fidesz…ones that the “average” voter can understand.
Ákos Hadházy. Photo: Lajos Soós.
The first such example is from Mr. Hadházy’s hometown and involves a secret tape, made public for the first time on Thursday, in which the city’s Fidesz mayor, Rezső Ács, explained in no uncertain terms the importance of deliberately overestimating the costs associated with European Union-funded projects. Normally, when local municipalities request EU funding for projects, they are expected to fund at minimum 15% of the costs of the project, while the remaining 85% comes from the European Union. Based on this tape from 2012, leaked by LMP today, Mr. Ács explained to other municipal politicians that by deliberately inflating the costs of a project and by doing this in collusion with contractors and third-party companies, the town could avoid paying a single cent.
This was the approach taken during the construction of a new kindergarten in Szekszárd, in 2012. Mr. Ács delved a little further into the details of the corrupt regime:
“This is how Hungary’s granting process works. [A company] comes down and says that I’ll do the complete project for you, I will win the grant for you, but I will bring everything needed for the project. And if you don’t agree with this, then I will just go on to the next town. Because I have a quota that I can distribute, but if you don’t agree, then I will go over to the neighbouring town. Unfortunately, this is what happens behind closed doors.”
The manner in which EU funded grants are distributed in Hungary is entirely backwards, compared to how a process like this should unfold. Based on Mayor Ács’s account, certain companies (almost certainly those close to the ruling Fidesz party) are effectively given promises of funds, or perhaps the funds themselves upfront, without any application or proposal having been submitted in advance. They then offer municipalities various projects that they could complete, without any input from the “client,” with no tendering and no ability to ask questions or obtain details on how the funds are being spent and invested in the town in question.
Essentially, companies associated with Fidesz control the EU purse strings, make no secret of this fact, and spend this money in rural Hungary as they see fit.
As Mr. Hadházy noted, in 2015, fully 7% of Hungary’s GDP was directly tied to EU subsidies. And these subsidies are being systematically abused, to fill the coffers of companies and clients of the ruling party, with the full collusion of Fidesz politicians.
LMP is doing a service by launching its anti-corruption campaign and by airing concrete instances of corruption each week.
And the EU is doing Hungarian democracy a huge disservice by continuing to fund and prop up the ruling regime.
