BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary cannot accept a link between access to European Union funds and meeting rule-of-law criteria as this would be akin to the EU operating like the former Soviet Union, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday.Nationalist Orban, who has been in power for over a decade and has been criticised for an erosion of democracy in Hungary, a former communist state, said “Hungarians’ money cannot be taken away” and ongoing EU debates about the criteria were “technical.” Orban said he talked with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday about the regulation. “I had to tell her that if this regulation drafted by the European parliament and the German presidency were to be accepted -- it requires two-thirds majority so we cannot block this -- then we have made Soviet Union out of the EU,” Orban told state radio. He said the criteria would amount to “blackmail on an ideological basis without objective criteria”.