Hungary’s ability to unlock billions in frozen EU funding will depend heavily on the outcome of its parliamentary election on April 12. The opposition Tisza party led by Peter Magyar will need to win a supermajority if it is to undo laws that have blocked the release of billions of euros in frozen EU funds, according to Capital Economics.

Tom Forshaw, Research Assistant, and Liam Peach, Senior Emerging Markets Economist, said in a note emailed to clients that “a victory for the opposition Tisza party, led by Péter Magyar, in the upcoming election would offer the clearest path to an institutional reset”.

Tisza is currently leading in the polls, but ousting incumbent Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is not enough to clear the path to have the frozen funds released. Tisza’s programme prioritises meeting some of the EU criticism and restoring access to the funds through anti-corruption measures and improvements in judicial and institutional quality.

However, Capital Economics cautioned that “many of its proposed reforms face constitutional constraints”, adding that “changes to electoral rules, the constitution and large parts of the judiciary are governed by cardinal laws requiring a two-thirds majority”. Without a supermajority, “Tisza could amend some ordinary laws, but securing full access to the €18bn ($19.44bn) in frozen EU funds would remain unlikely”.

Forshaw and Peach said that “since Prime Minister Orban’s Fidesz party secured a two-thirds parliamentary supermajority in 2010, many of Hungary’s core institutions have come under sustained pressure”, contributing to underperformance relative to regional peers on governance and rule of law indicators.

Despite this, the macroeconomic impact has been mixed. “It appears that Hungary has not necessarily become a less attractive destination for foreign investment,” they said, pointing to foreign direct investment inflows averaging just below 4% of GDP annually since 2017. EU membership, they added, “provides a legal and institutional anchor that limits the scope for policy deterioration”.

“Since joining the EU in 2004, Hungary has received transfers equivalent to 3% of GDP p.a.,” they said, but noted that absorption has declined sharply since 2023, with €1bn ($1.08bn) forfeited across 2024 and 2025 due to non-compliance with EU rules.

Access to €9.5bn ($10.26bn) in recovery funding remains contingent on completing 27 reform “super milestones” by August 2026. While “the European Commission has previously released funding in response to reforms”, Forshaw and Peach said it is “unlikely that the EU would formally lower the thresholds for unlocking frozen funds”.

They added that “a more plausible scenario is that the EU adopts a more flexible interpretation of compliance”, but warned that “many of the reform priorities that will be hardest to address… overlap directly with EU’s core criteria, making full access to the €18bn difficult without a parliamentary supermajority”.