EU leaders raged at Viktor Orbán on Thursday night, as they failed to convince Hungary to lift its veto on support for Ukraine, with president Volodymyr Zelensky lamenting the blockage and the uncertainty around it.
“What happened today in the European Council cannot simply be accepted,” German chancellor Friedrich Merz told press at the end of the summit just after midnight on Friday morning (20 March).
“This will have consequences that go far beyond this single event,” he added.
“Colleagues who have been members of the European Council far longer than I have were deeply angered by what happened today,” Merz concluded. “It is an act of serious disloyalty within the European Union.”
“Nobody can blackmail the European Council or EU institutions,” EU Council president António Costa echoed, after the summit concluded.
In an effort to persuade Orbán to allow the Kyiv decision to proceed without Hungary’s blocking, Merz noted that under EU rules, member states could “unanimously agree that certain decisions may subsequently be taken by qualified majority. [But] Viktor Orbán was not prepared to do this.”
“For the third month now, the most important financial security guarantee for Ukraine from Europe is not working — the €90bn support package for this year and the next,” Zelensky told EU leaders earlier on Thursday during the summit.
“This is critical for us. It is a resource to protect lives,” he said.
“Even today, we do not know for sure whether this support will be unblocked,” Zelensky added.
Earlier on Thursday, EU leaders agreed on wording to support the war-torn country without the backing of Budapest or Bratislava — a situation that already occurred at December’s summit.
90-minute talks
After 90-minute discussions in Brussels, no solution was found to ensure a quick disbursement to Ukraine of the much-needed €90bn loan.
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has linked lifting his veto on the Ukrainian aid package to repairing a Soviet-era oil pipeline carrying Russian oil, even though a legal deadline to stop the import of Russian fossil fuels is approaching. Slovakia is supporting Hungary in this endeavour.
Orbán is facing an election on April 12 where he trails in the polls to the opposition Tisza party.
Costa emphasised that Russia has attacked this pipeline 23 times and that Urkiane is still willing to repair it.
On top of that, Orbán is also holding hostage the next round of Russian sanctions that were supposed to be agreed upon last month for the anniversary of the fourth year of the full Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.
Costa had criticised Orbán’s veto on Ukraine aid as “unacceptable” during the summit, according to an EU official. The same wording was also echoed by several delegations in briefings ahead of the meeting.
Back in December, EU leaders decided not to use Russian frozen assets to assist Ukraine, instead agreeing on a €90bn loan — without the involvement of Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.
‘No Oil, No Money’ – and one upcoming election
Orbán’s slogan, widely seen as a domestic electoral move, is: “No Oil, No Money”.
Several officials from EU institutions have said that the situation of the damaged Druzhba pipeline, which carried Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia, has nothing to do with the commitment to support Ukraine.
“Its restoration depends exclusively on Ukraine’s capacity to repair it and on Russia’s willingness not to destroy it again,” the official said.
“President Zelensky has just committed to fully restore the flow of oil as soon as possible,” the official also said.
But a letter by Zelensky published on Tuesday indicates that reparation works would take at least “a month and a half” — past Orbán’s election date.
Earlier this week, EU institutions reached a deal with Kyiv to fix the damaged Russian oil pipeline, in which commission experts were to visit the Druzhba pipeline and any repairs would be paid from the EU budget.
But in a letter on Wednesday, the eve of the summit, Budapest and Bratislava criticised the European Commission for excluding their experts from the inspection mission to the Druzhba pipeline.
Slovakian PM Robert Fico said that during the meeting with his counterparts, he had raised the question of whether the EU was too “weak” to persuade Zelensky, or whether this was “an intentional effort to definitively cut off Slovakia and Hungary from supplies of Russian oil?”
Fico also said that Zelensky was “illegitimately interfering in the election campaign in Hungary, with the aim of replacing the current Hungarian government”.
No Plan B
No plan B has been envisioned so far, as officials argue that there is no legally visible path to bypass Orbán’s veto this time.
Last month, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) disbursed $1.5bn to keep the country running.
And the hope could be that a new IMF batch of funds, alongside more bilateral aid from EU countries, could help Ukraine to stay alive until the EU’s €90bn loan was unblocked.