The European Commission is under fire after its coronavirus emergency relief fund gave Hungary more than double the amount of EU money than Italy, which is the worst hit country in Europe.

Italy received €2.3bn (£2 bn) from the €37bn Coronavirus Response Investment Initiative but Hungary, which has a sixth of the population of Italy, got €5.6bn (just under £4.9bn). An estimated 172 people have died from the virus in Hungary compared to a staggering 23,660 victims in Italy.

Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, was accused of exploiting the pandemic to give himself sweeping new powers to rule by decree on March 30. He will now benefit from the EU windfall, which was adopted on the same day, despite Brussels’ long-standing concerns over respect for the rule of law and democracy in Hungary.

The commission admitted the mismatch was not “an optimal allocation”. The emergency fund recycles unspent funds from the EU’s cohesion programmes, which is EU Budget money to raise living standards in the bloc’s poorer regions.

Rather than disburse the cash according to need, the EU executive distributed it according to cohesion rules, which favoured Hungary, which is poorer than Italy.

“Italy was allocated Coronavirus Response Investment Initiative funding equivalent to 0.1 percent of its GDP, and Spain 0.3 percent, Hungary received an astonishing 3.9 percent of its GDP,” the European Stability Initiative think tank said in a report.

March 30, the date of Mr Orban’s Protection Against the Coronavirus Act and when the emergency fund was agreed, was “a dark day for EU assistance”, the think tank said.

“Europeans now need to find better ways to defend the values enshrined in their treaties, not with pious words and empty threats, but in the language of power and money that politicians like Orban will understand,” the European Stability Initiative said.

“What the EU needs today is a strategy that simultaneously addresses both threats to economic cohesion and to democracy, in a way that strengthens both."