Hungary will not allow block funds to continue flowing to Ukraine without accountability, Viktor Orban said
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban
rt — Hungary will resist European Commission plans to give Ukraine 50 billion euros in financial aid until Kiev explains what it has done with the last 70 billion euros, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday. Budapest and Brussels have repeatedly clashed over money and arms supplies to Ukraine.
According to the latest figures from Brussels, the EU has given Ukraine 72 billion euros in economic, military and humanitarian aid since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine last February. Despite this unprecedented departure draining its coffers, the European Commission announced earlier this month that it would offer Ukraine a further 50 billion euros in loans and grants.
“One thing is clear: We Hungarians … will not give Ukraine any more money until they say where the 70 billion euros of the previous funds went,” Orban said on Hungarian radio, according to a Portal report.
“And we find it completely ridiculous and absurd that we should contribute more money to fund the debt service costs of a loan from which we have not yet received the funds to which we are entitled,” he continued, referring to the recent one Commission announcement The interest cost on the bloc’s external debt would double this year due to inflation.
Due to ideological differences with their conservative governments, the Commission is currently denying Hungary and Poland access to postcorona recovery funds. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen admitted last year that withholding funds is one of several “tools” Brussels can use to force member states to “work with us”.
PROCEED TO RECOMMENDATIONS
Hungary blocked a €18 billion bailout for Ukraine last year until Brussels released a separate portion of the funds withheld from Budapest. Most recently, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Monday that Hungary would extend its veto on a 500 million euro arms package from the EU’s joint arms fund for Ukraine by another month.
Orban and Szijjarto have repeatedly called for an immediate ceasefire and peace talks in Ukraine. Earlier this week, Orban declared that a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield was “impossible” and that without an immediate ceasefire and an end to western arms supplies, Ukraine “will lose enormous amounts of wealth, lose many lives and experience unimaginable destruction”.