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“We’ve been fighting a very uphill battle in the past three years to ascertain that European Union funds are spent appropriately. […] We started to build in 2023, with absolutely zero support coming from the administration itself. […] We’ve been struggling to access records. There have been a number of politically sensitive cases where you do not get access to information,” Biró told foreign journalists at a media briefing on June 4.
“Or did not, I hope to be the right term at this point,” he quickly added, saying the advent of the Tisza government and its drive to access frozen EU funding this summer gave him confidence that the IH will henceforth be afforded the level of cooperation it needs to fulfill its tasks.
“You have heard by now a number of statements coming from the European Commission as well as from the Hungarian prime minister on reinforcing the authority’s mandate and power. We very much welcome that. We believe it is absolutely essential that the authority is reinforced so that it can execute its mandate,” he said.
This, he argued, was an essential element to enable the institution to support the government’s quest to access the EUR 16.4 billion in suspended EU funds and “address the high-level corruption that has existed in Hungary.”
In the days after speaking to the foreign media. Ferenc Biró gave several interviews to Hungarian media, including the weekly HVG’s website, in which he detailed criticism against the former Fidesz administration. In particular, he alleged that in a closed-door meeting with then-Minister of Justice Bence Tuzson and then-Minister of EU Affairs János Bóka in the summer of 2024, he was warned to drop investigations into suspicious cases.
Both Tuzson and Bóka have adamantly denied Biró’s allegations. Biró also estimated that corruption-related losses had cost Hungary Ft 60 trillion over the last 16 years, ranging from 5% of budget spending in 2010 to 20% by 2025.
The Integrity Authority, established at the behest of the European Commission as part of its endeavors to combat corruption in Hungary involving projects supported by European Union funding, began life in late 2022 with just five staff. It now employs “around” 145, with expectations of this rising to 200 by the year’s end, said Dániel Szügyi, head of international relations at IH, in an overview of activities.
The authority opened 31 investigations last year, involving a combined value of EUR 900 million in EU funding, almost three times the value of investigations in 2024.
But, despite being mandated to forward an official report annually to the government (which in turn has to respond with comments after three months), Szügyi noted, “Our work has very often fallen on deaf ears.”
Moreover, the Fidesz government’s responses were mostly negative. “Even in those cases where the government agreed to our recommendations, it very often resulted in no action. Either the comment specifically contained that ‘yes, we agree, but we see no need for further action,’ or there was some form of commitment to action, but without any details of the action or any deadlines,” Szügyi said.
As a result, “Still, nothing happens. As our authority has grown and started to close more cases […] the government’s attitude towards our recommendations has become even worse,” Szügyi lamented.
However, with the new government vowing to outlaw corruption, Biró believes such defiant inaction, coupled with bureaucratic obstructionism, will be a thing of the past.
“What would make sense is for the authority to play a central role in cooperation with the EPP [European Prosecutor’s Office]. We believe that the Hungarian landscape in fighting corruption is very fragmented. There are multiple institutions that sometimes have overlapping responsibilities. I would advocate for a simpler, more straightforward landscape, [although] the Integrity Authority is very happy to cooperate with any authorities,” he reasoned.
According to a post on the official website, on June 9, the Prosecutor General’s Office charged Ferenc Bíró, president of the Integrity Authority, with abuse of office, public document forgery and misuse of funds.
Prosecutors are pressing for a custodial sentence, along with a fine and confiscation of HUF 23 million in illegally obtained assets. Among the charges, they allege that Biró and his wife unlawfully used the official car and that he concluded illicit contracts with advisory companies in Brussels. The allegations follow dawn raids on the president’s office and home in January, 2025.
“We had a dawn raid both in the office here as well as in my home, simultaneously; it’s like 70 people, 15-16 at my home, policeman and SWAT teams, the whole nine yards,” he told journalists before the prosecutor’s announcement. “I think they wanted to force me to resign.”
Biró denies the charges, saying they are unjustified and amount to politically motivated harassment by the former government and its appointees.
At the end of May, the Integrity Authority scored a hit of sorts, when local prosecutors initiated charges in what has become the internationally infamous treeless-treetop walkway, arguably the most bizarre alleged misuse of funding in Hungary, even if the money involved barely registers on the corruption league table.
In 2018, Mihály Filemon, mayor of Nyírmártonfalva, a village near the Romanian border 260 kilometers east of Budapest, applied for HUF 64 mln in EU- and state-funded support under the Rural Development Program to create a forest recreation area featuring a treetop walkway.
After winning the funding in 2021, work began on the project, which was officially finished by the December 2022 deadline, according to investigative website Átlátszó. Apart from the fact that the work was shoddy, the toilets were unfinished, and the walkway timber was left unvarnished and prone to the elements, there was one rather obvious hitch: while the treetop walkway was under construction, the mayor (who owns the land, according to Átlátszó) decided to fell the trees, leaving the 50-meter-long bridge surrounded by a bare, treeless, featureless field. As one wag put it, “As a picnic area for nature lovers, it was about as attractive as a Tesco car park.”
Ferenc Biró justified the authority’s investigation into the case, saying it exposed weaknesses across the entire project cycle involving HUF 1.6 bln in EU funding. “This has an impact on society, just by being so iconic, and so iconically flawed, and I think that characterizes the system. While it may be chickenfeed in terms of value, the impact is fairly substantial,” Biró said.
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of June 19, 2026.
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