Belgium praises Hungary’s stated commitment to EU competitiveness agenda

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and senior EU officials hailed Hungary’s stated commitment to pursuing the EU single market and competitiveness agenda when Budapest assumes the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU in July.

“People definitely read [Letta’s] report,” De Croo said on Thursday (18 April) after the Special European Council summit, during which former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta presented his much-anticipated report on the future of the single market.

“What I am very pleased to hear is that the Hungarian presidency was very clear in the fact that they take this as one of the key elements of their presidency,” De Croo added.

An EU diplomat familiar with the discussions also told Euractiv that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was “very positive” regarding Letta’s proposals during the summit.

When asked whether Orbán was especially keen on deepening the Capital Markets Union (CMU)—a major focus of EU leaders in recent months—the diplomat said that Orbán expressed an eagerness to strengthen the bloc’s “competitiveness in general.”

Bolstering the EU’s competitiveness was one of the six “key priorities” announced by De Croo when his country assumed the six-month rotating Council presidency in January- amid growing concerns around high interest rates, slowing Chinese demand, and US and Beijing’s industrial policies posing a growing threat to the bloc’s economy.

‘A catalysing force’?

Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán, similarly signalled Hungary’s eagerness around the Letta report – telling Euractiv earlier on Thursday that Hungary will be “a catalysing force to bring it forward.”

However, while noting that “strengthening cooperation”, “tackling demographic challenges”, and “focusing on cohesion policy” are all “important” issues mentioned in the report, Orbán did not give specific details on which policy areas would be developed.

Meanwhile, he said that “Letta gives a lot of power to the [European] Commission on a lot of topics – it is federalising a lot of things” – and warned that enhancing EU “federalisation” is “not always [the] answer.”

“Because in the last five years… many issues which we federalised wound up in chaos,” Orbán said, adding that migration is the “biggest example of this”.

Letta’s report calls for enhancing integration in numerous areas – notably, in financial markets and financial markets supervision, as well as energy, telecoms and public procurement markets.

“According to our understanding,” Orbán said, “the current level of sovereignty transfer towards Brussels […] it’s enough.” 

[Additional reporting by Max Griera]

[Edited by Anna Brunetti/Alice Taylor]

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