Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)

A large amount of funding has not gone to Hungary. I say that bluntly. If I met the Hungarian minister now, I would say that we will not pay for this. Why should we pay for it? We have to be clear about that. The rule of law is very much a part of our work in the budget negotiations. We have to work with other countries on that as well.

It was a major achievement to get this through the European Council. The Deputy may recall that when the Council decided to bring in this conditionality regime, as it is called, unanimity was needed. Therefore, it needed Poland and Hungary. At the time, Poland was in a similar situation. They did agree to it, but the condition was that it would go to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The court approved it, so it is there. Hungary has lost billions of euro because of it, and I am proud that we have put pressure on.

We have also been involved in court actions. In February, we intervened in the European Commission's case on the sovereignty protection law. As regards removing Hungary, the Deputy is talking about removing its right to vote at the Council of Ministers. That requires the support of a lot of member states. Four fifths of the member states need to vote at the General Affairs Council for a proposal to go to the European Council. Then unanimity is needed, not including Hungary. When the PiS Government was in office in Poland, it was considered that unanimity would not happen. I am still not sure whether we would get four fifths at the moment.