War between Ukraine and RussiaDossierWhile the member states of the European Union meet this Thursday to decide whether to start accession negotiations with Ukraine, the Hungarian Prime Minister, who is close to the Kremlin, is threatening to use his vet.
Viktor Orbán seems determined to play spoilsport for the twenty-seven. “There is no reason to discuss anything because the conditions are not met,” said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán this Thursday, December 14, at the opening of the European Council summit in Brussels, where the reception of Accession negotiations are to be decided on Ukraine and the financial aid package (50 billion euros) intended for this purpose. “We have to come back to this issue later,” the nationalist leader said, pointing, without committing further, to the March 2024 deadline set by the European Commission.
Will Orbán give in to pressure from his European partners, as he has done in the past? Against what guarantees? On Wednesday his country received the release of 10.2 billion euros from the European Commission – 21 billion is still blocked due to its multiple breaches of the rule of law – a decision that provoked the anger of MPs who denounced “blackmail”. “We are not here to offer Orbán anything,” thundered Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. “We will work hard” to find a solution, he added, without elaborating on the outlines of a possible compromise. “The unit [de l’UE] is the key,” emphasized the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola.
Without the help of the Twenty-Seven, “of course we can’t win.”
For the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, “continuing and increasing” aid to Ukraine is an “existential question” for the European Union. But the unanimity between the 27 states, which is essential for an agreement, currently seems more than uncertain for the European heads of state and government. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is unsettled by an ineffective counteroffensive and negative signals from Washington, where the Republican majority in the House of Representatives is hesitant to vote for a new aid package, and for his part assures that Ukraine has met all the conditions demanded by Brussels to allow the process to proceed start. Without this help, “of course we cannot win,” Volodymyr Zelensky recalled in Oslo on Wednesday.
Just as the crucial summit in Brussels began, President Vladimir Putin, who is close to Orbán, assured from Moscow that Russia was confident enough to “move on.” Peace requires the “denazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine, the Kremlin leader emphasized.