Hungary’s Victor Orban is a “negative force” within the European Union, for blocking the bloc from providing Ukraine with a loan to help its war effort, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Luc Frieden has said.
EU leaders on Thursday couldn’t break the deadlock over a €90 billion loan to war-torn Ukraine, leaving some fuming over Hungarian Prime Minister Orban’s refusal to budge until he regains access to Russian oil.
In an hour-long discussion during a summit in Brussels, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attended via videolink, nearly every EU leader spoke in favour of unlocking the aid, noting they had all agreed to the loan during a marathon meeting in December.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Luc Frieden (left) and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the summit in Brussels on Thursday © Photo credit: SIP / Frédéric Sierakowski
But Hungary, backed by Slovakia, stood its ground, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. Going into the meeting, Orban made it clear that he wouldn’t relent until Kyiv restores oil shipments through the Druzhba pipeline, which was damaged in a Russian drone strike.
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On the sidelines of the summit in Brussels Frieden called Orban’s current stance on the issue unacceptable, saying that “it doesn’t work that way”.
The Luxembourg prime minister also said the situation in the Middle East is “very worrying”.
“We condemn the attacks on the Gulf states,” said Frieden. “We depend on them for fossil fuels and we do not like them to be attacked by Iran or anybody else.”
Frieden also rebuffed the notion that EU states should help the United States in the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for financial aid for Ukraine for the US.
“This is not a conflict that we have started,” he said. “None of the European countries have been involved and we don’t want to get drawn into a conflict we have not been consulted about.”
(Additional reporting from Bloomberg.)