Romanian and Hungarian Parliaments Scramble to Pass EU‑Funded Reforms

Romanian legislators may be recalled from their summer holidays for an extraordinary session around 20 July as the Bolojan government pushes ahead with a package of laws needed to unlock more than €4.5 billion in European Union recovery funds. The proposed measures include a unified public‑service salary law, incompatibility rules, a public‑function code, urban planning reforms and decarbonisation of heating, each tied to funding tranches of €770‑€972 million for projects such as highways, railway electrification and new hospitals and schools.

In Hungary, new Prime Minister Peter Magyar has launched “Operation Purifying Fire” to overturn the institutional framework created by former premier Viktor Orbán. His agenda features an anti‑corruption bill, the dissolution of the Office for the Defence of National Sovereignty, reforms of public media and a constitutional amendment package aimed at ending the concentration of power. The moves are intended to unfreeze roughly €16 billion of EU funds that were suspended under Orbán’s rule and to revive a stagnating economy.