The Brief – Don’t expect Hungary to back down easily

With the EU increasingly bogged down in difficulties in its efforts to provide more support for Ukraine and only a month until a crucial last EU summit of the year, expect Hungary to up its ante.

In the following months, EU leaders will be faced with a series of crucial decisions that will be symbolic of whether they can stick to the slogan of ‘whatever it takes’ to support Ukraine and its future in the bloc.

They are, however, in for a bumpy ride and look towards an uncomfortable four weeks before they lock themselves up in the bright-coloured room at the Europa building in Brussels.

“We need a period of reflection and a strategic discussion on the policy of the EU towards Ukraine,” Hungary’s European Affairs Minister Janos Boka told reporters as he arrived for talks with his EU counterparts to prepare for the 14-15 December summit.

Until such discussion, Budapest would not support any EU decisions to advance Ukraine’s accession process or further aid for Kyiv, Boka said.

This threat is taken slightly more seriously than before.

In the past, Orban had demanded a “strategic” discussion over EU sanctions against Russia (which never really happened) and eventually aligned himself with the rest of the bloc, but not without negotiations going down to the wire over concessions he sought for Hungary.

Some EU diplomats in Brussels are venting their frustration that most discussions over the past few months have been largely symbolic rather than producing any substantial decisions.

They don’t use the expression ‘waste of time’, but anger is growing at Hungary doing exactly that, in addition to criticism for increasingly cosying up to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

EU foreign and defence ministers earlier this week could only take stock of decisions related to Ukraine and acknowledge that there is little prospect of moving forward quickly on the eight €500 million European Peace Facility (EPF) military aid tranches, which Budapest has been blocking for months.

The hold-ups so far culminated in Orbán at the October summit demanding Ukrainian officials “to come to Budapest and negotiate”.

Ukrainian officials involved in direct talks with Hungary insist Kyiv is doing so in good faith, but results are pending.

Now, EU officials have said there could be a potential ‘Plan B’ workaround to any Hungarian veto on financial aid to Ukraine, which would include €50 billion for Kyiv from the bloc’s budget until 2027.

Should there be an EU budget ‘package deal’ of sorts, military aid might have a better chance of being agreed upon by the end of the year – or early next year – without significantly harming the bloc’s support efforts.

But there will not necessarily be a workaround for inviting Ukraine to accession negotiations once it meets all conditions, something backed by most EU member states at this point, especially in the absence of other security guarantees for Kyiv. Unless Orbán gets in the way.

“Ukraine is in no way ready to negotiate on its ambitions to join the European Union,” the Hungarian leader said last week.

“The clear Hungarian position is that the negotiations must not begin,” he added.

He added that his government would “not accept” pressure from the EU to support Ukraine’s membership bid in exchange for having the funds released.

Hungary is also at odds with the EU over the bloc’s freezing access to funds because of concerns about the country’s democratic backsliding during his rule.

Rest assured, EU diplomats say Hungary will use them as a bargaining chip.

Asked by Euractiv last week, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba diplomatically said it would be “in the best interest” of Hungary to have Ukraine as a member.

One can “always expect an obstacle, but we are pretty skilled in overcoming any kind of obstacles”, Kuleba added.

But Orbán keeps complaining that Ukraine curbed the rights of the Hungarian minority, an argument that for years blocked Kyiv’s participation in NATO discussions.

Meanwhile, some EU diplomats increasingly question whether EU money will remain the sole demand.

“If it’s not removing Hungarian OTP bank from Ukraine’s list of ‘war sponsors’, then it is unfreezing frozen EU funds or something else – you can never fully shake off the impression that they’re only finding excuses for doing what they’re doing,” one EU diplomat quipped.

“If that’s the case, it will only get more difficult with time,” the diplomat added.

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The Roundup

During her State of the Union address, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed the crucial role of the wind industry in delivering the EU Green Deal but also remarked that the industry is facing a unique set of challenges.

Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday that the German parliament’s 2022 decision to pour €60 billion from the unused debt contracted during the COVID-19 crisis into a new climate fund was unlawful.

The EU ombudsman asked the European Commission on Tuesday to give guarantees of independence for the experts evaluating the industry’s proposals for the European Defence Fund, in another blow to the EU’s transparency in defence industry policy.

The UK Supreme Court has struck down the government’s controversial ‘cash for asylum seekers’ deal with Rwanda, in a landmark ruling that could shape how EU countries and the European Commission broker their agreements with third countries on migration. 

Businesses remain sceptical that a new EU certification framework for carbon removals is sufficient to generate a self-sustaining market, arguing Brussels must do more to make removing carbon from the atmosphere financially attractive.

Don’t miss this week’s Health Brief: One week in the world of health; and this week’s Green Brief: Dirty deals in clean energy – the EU’s worst nightmare.

Look out for…

• The European Migration Network Conference co-hosted by the European Commission and the Spanish Presidency of the European Council in Madrid Wednesday.
• The EU Social Forum 2023 on “AI and the world of work” in Brussels Wednesday.
• EU agriculture and fisheries ministers will meet in Brussels Monday.
• European Economic Area Council meets in Brussels Monday.

Views are the author’s

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]