On the eve of the EU summit, the Commission released part of the funding that had been frozen due to legal issues. It remains to be seen whether this will be enough to change the Hungarian Prime Minister's opinion.
Ten billion euros – that's how much Hungary's consent to start accession negotiations with Ukraine is worth to the EU. Faced with the threat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to derail the debate at the EU summit on Thursday and Friday, the Brussels authority withdrew free of charge a third of the frozen EU funding allocated to Hungary (which totals around 30 thousand millions of euros).
The Commission's announcement came on Wednesday evening, shortly after a law change was published in Hungary's Official Gazette, which allows national judges to request preliminary rulings from the European Court of Justice without restrictions. After a “careful examination” and “several contacts” with the Hungarian government, it was concluded that Budapest complied with the conditions in the field of judicial independence, it was said in Brussels. “This means that part of the cohesion policy payments are no longer blocked and Hungary can claim payments of up to €10.2 billion.”
Is “rescue” enough?
Council President Charles Michel wanted to discuss his veto threat with Orbán on Wednesday. However, it is not yet clear whether this transfer, described as a “bailout” by the news portal Politico, will be enough to allow a positive conclusion to negotiations at the European Council. Just one day before the Commission's decision, Viktor Orbán's influential chief strategist, Balázs Orbán, had made the removal of the Hungarian veto on the Ukraine issue conditional on the payment of all outstanding EU funds. And Orbán himself did not strike a conciliatory tone during a debate in the Hungarian parliament on Wednesday: his government rejected “hasty” admission negotiations with Ukraine. This would be “absurd” and “ridiculous,” given that Ukraine is still involved in a war that it “cannot win,” Orbán said. To support this position, the government's majority in parliament even passed a resolution calling on the Prime Minister to veto the start of accession negotiations with Ukraine.
Recently, Kiev even made massive concessions to the Hungarians. A controversial language law was recently reversed, which banned the use of minority languages in education and public institutions in Ukraine since 2019. Nearly 100,000 Hungarians live in Ukraine's Western Carpathians today, and due to the strict language law, diplomatic relations between Budapest and Kiev has been in the ice age for the past few years.
72 percent against Kyiv
However, Budapest was not impressed by this. Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said Ukraine's efforts were “still not enough”. A member of the Hungarian ruling Fidesz party in the EU Parliament, on the other hand, described Ukraine's hasty cancellation of the language law as a “farce”. The Hungarian government also criticizes the fact that the integration of the Western Balkans into the EU is progressing very slowly, despite the region knocking on the EU's door for much longer than Ukraine. Because of the war against Russia, Kiev is being “favored” to the detriment of other candidate countries for “political reasons”, which is unacceptable, says in Budapest.
Meanwhile, pro-government pollster Századvég published a survey showing that 72 percent of Hungarians oppose the start of accession negotiations with Ukraine. In September, it was 63%.