Hungary’s government has withdrawn HUF 33 billion (€84.6 million) in EU funding previously awarded to Gallicoop, one of the country’s largest turkey processors and a company linked to billionaire Lőrinc Mészáros, citing the same ownership-transparency rules recently used to strip OPUS TITÁSZ of more than HUF 66 billion (€169.2 million) in EU grants.
The Ministry for Agriculture and Food Economy said a review found that Gallicoop was not eligible for the funding because its ownership structure did not meet statutory transparency requirements. The company was notified on 4 March that two projects had won funding under the EU-backed Common Agricultural Policy Strategic Plan, but the National Managing Authority withdrew the grant decisions on 23 July, before the money was paid out.
According to the ministry, Hungarian law allows public funding to be awarded only to legal entities considered transparent, meaning their ownership structure and beneficial owners must be identifiable. Gallicoop is owned through private-equity funds, which the ministry said made its ultimate beneficial owners unidentifiable and therefore rendered the original award unlawful.
‘The amount was more than six times the support granted to individual companies under other food-processing tenders’
The ministry said Gallicoop was the sole winner of the specially targeted ‘Food Industry Champions’ tender and had been awarded HUF 33 billion (€84.6 million) for two projects. It added that the amount was more than six times the support granted to individual companies under other food-processing tenders. The money would have financed slaughterhouse capacity expansion, technological upgrades and related supplier developments.
The decision closely follows the government’s earlier intervention against OPUS TITÁSZ, another Mészáros-linked company. The Hungarian Development Bank notified the electricity-network operator on 6 August that two applications for grid development and smart meters had been successful, before excluding it from the schemes four days later over an alleged failure to meet transparency requirements. More than HUF 66 billion (€169.2 million) in Recovery and Resilience Facility funding was affected.
OPUS TITÁSZ rejected that decision as ‘professionally and legally unfounded’, arguing that transparency had already been examined during the initial eligibility process, which it had passed before its applications received substantive approval. The company has launched legal challenges.
The two cases come as the Tisza government moves to tighten rules governing opaque investment structures. Justice Minister Márta Görög announced on Tuesday that legislation would be amended to strengthen and clarify requirements for identifying the beneficial owners of private-equity and venture-capital funds. She said such structures had frequently been used in recent years to conceal the ultimate owners of major assets and that identifying those behind them was a matter of public interest.
‘Gallicoop, which employs nearly 1,600 people, also suggested that political considerations may have influenced the withdrawal’
The proposed legislation would also tighten transparency requirements in public procurement and expand disclosure obligations. The Gallicoop and OPUS TITÁSZ decisions, however, were based on transparency requirements already contained in existing law, rather than the newly proposed changes.
Gallicoop rejected the ministry’s decision and said it would pursue every available legal remedy. The company stressed that the funding was intended for production and supplier investments rather than payments to its owners and warned that losing it could leave the Hungarian processor at a disadvantage against German, French and Polish competitors. Gallicoop, which employs nearly 1,600 people, also suggested that political considerations may have influenced the withdrawal.
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