Hungary Backs Exclusion of Defense Spending From EU Deficit Calculation
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Finance Minister Mihály Varga told an informal meeting of his European Union peers in Spain that the calculation of member states' accrual-based budget deficits ought to be adjusted to reflect spending on defense, he said in a post on Facebook on Saturday, according to a report by state news wire MTI.
"It would be fair if, in this extraordinary situation, EU rules would not account a country's defence expenditures as part of the Maastricht deficit," Varga said, posting from the Ecofin meeting in Santiago de Compostela.
He argued that Hungary's spending on defense had reached an annual 2% of GDP, while the country had spent over HUF 650 billion to protect its border from illegal migration since 2015.
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