Hungary “has a stamp [of approval], even from Brussels”, proving that its judiciary is completely independent, and “the French president should also respect that fact”, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office said. Gergely Gulyás responded to remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron, who said in Dresden on Monday that some countries took money from the European Union but did not promote the independence of the judiciary or the press, cultural diversity, or the autonomy of universities. “It is not a tendency but reality in Hungary,” Macron said. Gulyás told MTI that without that “stamp” of approval, the EU would not have released a large part of the funding it owed to Hungary. “We expect the French president to respect those facts, even in the last phase of the campaign preceding the European parliamentary elections, and not to question facts that even the European Commission has verified,” Gulyás said