The sign proudly announces that the roundabout near Zalaegerszeg in western Hungary was built with 500 million forints (about $1.5 million) of funds from the European Union.
The roundabout was built to service a container terminal on a new railway line that would help provide this landlocked part of central Europe with better access to the sea. Rather than having to pass through Budapest, Hungary’s capital, goods arriving from the Adriatic coast would transit quickly through the west of the country into Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and beyond.
But there’s a problem. Years after the roundabout was built, there’s still no railway. Instead, the roundabout lies unused in a field, waiting for the Hungarian government to build the railway that would make it useful.
Critics of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán say EU-funded construction projects like these are a monument to the economic system his government has built over its 16 years in office. Orbán’s electoral success, they say, has combined relentlessly demonizing the EU – painting it as a decadent, liberal, corrupting force in Hungary – while happily accepting vast amounts of money from it.
Don’t worry, if he wins the next elections EU will start thinking about maybe doing something about it. If he loses nothing will ever be done about it.
If he wins, there are going to be more than one roundabouts.
Would be hilarious if they went in hard with it. Just start copy-pasting just a wild amount of them in grids that don’t connect to any inlet or exit to/from actual roads. After a certain point, they could say it is some national art project that is about the very corruption that leads to this original one.
They already did something about it (froze funds), it’s one of the reasons the opposing candidate is leading in the polls.
I think they only froze some of the founds. No idea what impact did it have on the polls. Poland got its funds frozen as well and it definitely wasn’t the main reason why opposition won. 2 years after the parliamentary elections PiS won presidential elections again and is back to blocking EU funding now. I think this is what most people don’t realize here. Even if Orban loses his party will not disappear. His supporters will not disappear. Prosecuting those people is very difficult. Undoing the damage they have done is very difficult. The opposition party will have their own corruption scandals. Orban can be back in power after another election cycle with most of the mess he left still untouched. Hoping that one electoral loss will fix the entire country is very naive yet it looks like that’s EU’s only hope here. EU needs deep reforms that will shield it from bad actors like Hungary, not just hope that little pressure will fix them.
I agree with your points. Just sayin’ that while it may be true the EU has done too little, it’s not true they’ve done “nothing.”