A company in the business empire of Lőrinc Mészáros received 2.874bn forints in EU funding from Viktor Orbán’s former government, despite 36 identified deficiencies in its application and project documentation.
Aqua Lorenzo Kft. was awarded the money in May 2022 for the modernisation of its mineral-water plant in Albertirsa, according to an investigation published by Átlátszó on 16 September 2026. The grant covered almost 40% of the project’s total cost of about 7.7bn forints, raising fresh questions about the transparency of EU-fund allocation under the former Orbán government.
The project was intended to improve energy efficiency, expand production, install new production lines, build a solar power plant and modernise the factory’s water systems. Yet the company’s application was far from complete when it was assessed by the state treasury, which identified 36 shortcomings and demanded repeated amendments.
A project repeatedly sent back for corrections
The problems identified by the treasury included deficiencies in tender offers, technical documentation, proof of the company’s own contribution and calculations relating to energy efficiency. The paperwork was also not finalised smoothly after the grant had been approved: several further rounds of corrections were required during the project’s formal completion.
Despite those concerns, the company received almost the full amount it had requested. The decision meant that a business linked to one of Hungary’s most politically connected entrepreneurs secured nearly 2.9bn forints from a European fund even though officials had identified substantial weaknesses in the documents supporting the application.
The case is significant because the shortcomings were not confined to a minor administrative error. They affected the tender process, the technical basis of the investment and the way the applicant demonstrated both its financial contribution and the expected energy savings. Taken together, they cast doubt on whether companies competing for the same funds were assessed on genuinely equal terms.
Questions over equal treatment
Mészáros’s business empire has been treated in the material as closely affiliated with Orbán’s former political leadership. Against that background, the Aqua Lorenzo decision has become a particularly conspicuous example of public money being directed to a company associated with the former prime minister’s circle.
The central issue is not simply the size of the grant, but the contrast between the deficiencies recorded by the treasury and the outcome of the selection process. The company was allowed to proceed through repeated revisions and was ultimately approved for almost the entire sum sought. That sequence places the burden on the authorities to explain how the application met the required standard and whether other applicants were given the same opportunity to correct comparable problems.
EU funding is intended to support development projects, but the way it is distributed also carries a wider institutional consequence. When a politically connected company receives a large grant after officials have documented weaknesses in its application, confidence in the impartiality of the process is weakened, regardless of whether the planned factory improvements are eventually delivered.
The contrast with Orbán’s Brussels rhetoric
The episode also exposes a sharp tension in Orbán’s political messaging. The former prime minister publicly criticised Brussels and presented European funds as an instrument of pressure directed at Hungary. At the same time, his government readily used those funds to finance projects involving companies close to the former leadership.
Aqua Lorenzo’s grant therefore illustrates what the supplied evidence describes as a double standard: European money was denounced in political rhetoric, while billions of forints from the same funding system were channelled to businesses affiliated with the governing circle. The approval of the mineral-water project, despite repeated documentary problems, makes that contradiction especially difficult to dismiss as merely political language.
The unresolved question is whether the authorities responsible for the award can demonstrate that the process applied the same standards to politically connected and independent applicants. Without that assurance, the case will remain a test of how Hungary’s EU-funded programmes were administered under the former Orbán government.
Should EU funding rules impose tougher scrutiny when grants go to businesses linked to senior political figures?
