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While the Hungarian government stepped up its attacks on the European Union last year with its “Let’s stop Brussels” campaign, the family of Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n kept benefiting from EU funds.<\/p>\n
Gamma Analcont, a company co-owned by Gy\u0151z\u0151 Orb\u00e1n Jr., one of the prime minister’s two brothers, was awarded an EU grant worth 129 million forints (416 thousand euros) last December. This was the third time the firm received EU subsidies since the prime minister’s brother bought stakes in the company. At the same time, as Direkt36’s investigations have revealed earlier<\/a>, companies owned by Viktor Orb\u00e1n’s father and two brothers have been participating in public construction projects, funded mainly by the European Union.<\/p>\n Gamma Analcont received the latest grant to develop an “intelligent control engineering system” for the oil, gas and chemical industries. In August 2016, the company won an EU grant worth 291 million forints (940 thousand euros) to carry out a renewable energy project in consortium with another company. Seven months earlier, the firm had been awarded 57 million (184 thousand euros) to expand its production capacities.<\/a><\/p>\n The funding for the subsidies comes from the European Union’s budget but the grant system is operated by the Hungarian government. Since an institutional reshuffle in 2013, the system has been under the control of the Prime Minister’s Office.<\/p>\n Although many other companies have received grants similar to Gamma Analcont’s (or even much bigger ones), the case of Orb\u00e1n Jr.’s company is made special by the fact that EU-bashing has been a central element of Viktor Orb\u00e1n’s government policies since he came to power in 2010. He compared Brussels to the Moscow of communism’s darkest period and his government’s current anti-immigrant campaign is partly an attack against the EU.<\/p>\n Direkt36 contacted the Prime Minister’s press officer, the management of Gamma Analcont and Gy\u0151z\u0151 Orb\u00e1n Jr., but none of them responded to our inquiries.<\/p>\nTo continue this work, we need your support.
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