The EU's post-pandemic recovery fund showed both sides of its conditionality mechanism on the same day. Hungary said it had met every remaining condition to unlock its full €10 billion allocation from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), according to Euronews. Romania, by contrast, is set to lose €770 million after its governing coalition missed the deadline to pass a reform of public-sector salaries, a required condition for its own RRF funds, Euronews reports.

Euronews describes the announcement as part of Péter Magyar's effort to draw a line under the Orbán era. Hungary's claim of full compliance is not yet the same as payment: the European Commission still has to verify it against the plan.

Both mechanisms follow the same legal design. Under the RRF regulation, each of the 27 national recovery plans is broken into sequenced milestones and targets that unlock successive funding tranches. The Commission assesses compliance tranche by tranche, and the Council of the EU then approves disbursement by qualified majority. Missing a milestone can mean losing the funds tied to it outright.

In Romania, the missed deadline immediately set off recriminations among the country's pro-European ruling parties, each blaming the others for the failure to agree the salary reform, per Euronews.

What to watch: whether Romania's coalition can still pass the pay reform in time to protect funds tied to later tranches, and whether the blame game weakens the coalition further.