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for the view from a former European Commissioner that was actually in charge of rule of law and values. We're joined by Vera Yurovva, the Czech politician who was vice president of the European Commission until 2024. Great to have you with us here in the studio. Good morning. Thank you for having me. And of course, you're very familiar with the issues in Hungary. You followed them for many years as vice president there. Hungary now has a new government. Victor Orban seems to have disappeared. Your view on this new era? Well, I was happy, I have to say, after the elections, not only that uh Victor Orban is leaving after so many years and uh after what he
has done to Hungarians. Uh but uh I was happy that the democratic system worked. Changing of the guards happened and Peter Mayer, the new prime minister, he was here in Brussels. There was a deal struck. He was here on Friday. They managed to unlock the funds, but he has a long list of reforms to do. Will he manage? It seems like mission impossible there. If you listen to our correspondent, he has a long list uh of uh things to do in a very short time because uh most of the money uh should be used committed and invested by uh August this year. So this is a very short deadline. Yes. Long list of things uh which should not be surprising. Yeah. because the European taxpayers were urging us in the
commission to do more to protect uh the money going to Hungary, not to pay the gifts for Victor Orban's uh families and friends. And there's a 3-month deadline here. What happens if they don't reach the deadline? Well, I think that uh it is feasible to do the summary forms in case the legislative process uh is fast. Of course, uh it would be difficult to fulfill something which needs uh more preparations, but as I said, Hungarians, the current government is not surprised. These are not new requests from Brussels.
What would be the hardest? Uh I think there are things relating to judiciary independence uh and uh division of powers between different layers of justice system. they should uh do uh changes in media wealth and should more have been done before by the previous commission that you were in? Uh we tried to um make to convince uh Orurban's government to join the European public prosecutor's office. This was the main thing I wanted them to do because to protect the EU money it but they never listened to you. They didn't trust you. They didn't like you, you know. They didn't believe that this will go without any reaction if they
didn't join. But they after that uh the reaction on it was the mechanism to freeze the money when the money is not protected enough. Another thing Hungary of course under Orbin was blocking was Ukraine's membership. This week we're seeing Antonio Kos in the Western Balkans trying to put momentum on their potential membership. What is your view here? Who should be the next member to join the European Union? I spoke in recent weeks to many western balkcon people and they are fed up to be uh what 20 years in the waiting room. There must be some move and uh over time I see that more and more we need them to join then
they need Europe. This is obvious that we need to have courage to grow politically, geographically. We are under big pressure from outside. If you were a commissioner right now that's my question. What would keep you up at night? But what keep me up at night? The state of democracy and rule of law uh in Europe in general. That's why by the way I'm here because I am launching today with my team the new project democracy 27 uh which is a citizens initiative and which would complement what the commission is doing. Would it be China, Russia, Trump in international foreign policy? Uh honestly it's uh it's the United States.
Okay. Which scares me.
