
So hearing that the European Union has begun the process of clawing back hundreds of millions of euros in funds meant to go to Hungary is not a surprise. The move comes now that Hungary has missed a deadline to pay a huge fine for breaking the European Union’s asylum rules. The news, combined with one in which a company in Hungary believed to be linked to pagers that exploded in Lebanon, make the country look pretty bad.
Now the European Union plans to deduct the fine from the funds earmarked for Hungary in the bloc's budget. The initial fine of 200 million euros is growing by one million euros every day Hungary has not paid up but to so called Prime Minister Viktor Orban has insisted he will not back down from his position on refusing to accept asylum seekers.
For more on this, we talk to DW (Deutsche Welle) Correspondent Jack Parrock, who is joining us from Brussels.