After years of frozen funds and fractured trust, the European Commission has proposed releasing €4.2 billion to Hungary — a gesture that reflects not merely a financial adjustment, but a reckoning with what democratic accountability can still accomplish. The departure of Viktor Orbán and the arrival of Prime Minister Peter Magyar has created the conditions under which Brussels feels able to extend, cautiously, a renewed hand. The proposal is partial, provisional, and contingent — a recognition that institutional repair is a process, not an event.