{"id":21183,"date":"2026-04-23T12:59:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T12:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/21183\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T12:59:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T12:59:37","slug":"european-union-approves-e90bn-loan-for-ukraine-after-hungary-lifts-veto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/21183\/","title":{"rendered":"European Union approves \u20ac90bn loan for Ukraine after Hungary lifts veto"},"content":{"rendered":"

Diplomats said the definitive sign-off should come on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The feud over the pipeline pitted Hungary’s nationalist premier Viktor Orban against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, stalling the release of urgently needed funds for Kyiv. Resolving the stand-off will allow Brussels to start paying out the loan in the coming months.<\/p>\n

“Implementation of our agreement with the European Union to unblock a \u20ac90 billion support package for Ukraine over two years is now effectively underway,” Zelensky, who is expected to join a summit of EU leaders in Cyprus on Thursday, posted online.<\/p>\n

“The unblocking is the right signal under the current circumstances. Russia must end its war.”<\/p>\n

Pumping oil<\/p>\n

Slovakia started receiving crude oil through the Druzhba pipeline early on Thursday, the country’s Economy Ministry said, confirming the end of a months-long outage after what\u00a0Ukraine\u00a0said was a Russian strike on the pipeline.<\/p>\n

“The Economy Ministry informs that today at 2am the reception of oil to Slovakia through the Druzhba pipeline was resumed,” a ministry statement said.<\/p>\n

The Druzhba pipeline has become one of the most politically charged pieces of infrastructure in Europ, \u00a0since the halt in Russian oil deliveries to Hungary\u00a0and Slovakia in January.<\/p>\n

Kremlin-friendly Orban, who suffered a crushing election defeat<\/a> this month, had vowed that he would not budge until Ukraine repaired the pipeline hit by a Russian strike.<\/p>\n

Oil through the Ukrainian section of the pipeline\u00a0started flowing<\/a>\u00a0on Wednesday, prompting\u00a0Hungary\u00a0to lift its veto on the EU\u00a0loan.<\/p>\n

Zelensky has made no secret of his opposition to the fact that some EU members still buy Russian oil and gas, a key source of revenue for Moscow to fund its invasion.<\/p>\n

Sanctions approved<\/p>\n

The row with Hungary has held up EU support for Ukraine at a time when the United States has largely cut Kyiv off and eased sanctions on Russian oil amid the Iran war.<\/p>\n

Orban’s loss in the elections after 16 years in power fuelled hopes the funds would be unlocked and the EU could move past the frequent blockages experienced during his tenure.<\/p>\n

But EU officials had believed they might have to wait until his pro-EU successor Peter Magyar took office in May to get it approved.<\/p>\n

EU countries also gave the preliminary go-ahead to a fresh round of sanctions on Russia that had been stalled by both Hungary and Slovakia over the pipeline row.<\/p>\n

The new round of economic punishment for Moscow \u2013 the 20th from the EU since the war started in 2022 \u2013 includes measures on Russia’s energy, banking and trade sectors.<\/p>\n

Zelensky on Tuesday urged the EU to begin ratcheting up sanctions on Moscow again, at a time when US President Donald Trump has eased pressure on the Kremlin.<\/p>\n

(with newswires)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Diplomats said the definitive sign-off should come on Thursday. The feud over the pipeline pitted Hungary’s nationalist premier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2466,15244,39,40,58,15243,1401,28,64],"class_list":{"0":"post-21183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-druzhba-pipeline","9":"tag-economy-ministry","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-european-union","12":"tag-hungary","13":"tag-president-volodymyr-zelensky","14":"tag-russian-oil","15":"tag-ukraine","16":"tag-viktor-orban"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}