BUDAPEST, June 10 -- For sixteen years the money sat at the center of the fight, billions in European funds frozen in Brussels while Viktor Orban built the state that gave the European Union reason to freeze them. On Tuesday the government that replaced him filed the legislation designed to win it back, and the bill reads like an itemized reversal of everything the EU spent a decade objecting to.

Prime Minister Peter Magyar's administration submitted wide-ranging draft anti-corruption legislation to parliament, the package Brussels has been waiting for since it agreed late last month to release more than 16 billion euros in suspended funds, conditioned on Hungary staying on its reform track, Bloomberg reported. Roughly 18 billion euros w...