The European Commission is pressing ahead with its Ukraine loan, despite Hungary’s election-linked veto.

EU officials had received a “financial strategy” for the €90bn loan from Kyiv and were drafting “memorandums of understanding” for pay-outs, due to start in April, commission vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis told the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday (25 March).

The ongoing “technical work” was taking place even though Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán vetoed the loan at an EU summit six days ago.

Dombrovskis voiced “regret” at Orbán’s move, which meant the work could not be legally completed, but said: “We [the EU] will not be discouraged … we will deliver [the €90bn] one way or the other”.

In contrast to Orbán’s pro-Kremlin views, the Latvian EU commissioner spoke of “aggressor Russia”, while the EU Council’s Portuguese president, António Costa, spoke of Russia’s “war of aggression”, and told MEPs the EU would “support Ukraine as long as it takes”.

EU parliament plenary session with EU Council president António Costa (Source: European Parliament)

Leftwing, liberal, and Green MEPs let rip at Orbán in the ensuing debate, who was using the Ukraine veto-row to campaign in Hungarian elections, due on 12 April.

Hs behaviour was “shameful” and he was doing the bidding of “external autocrats”, said the centre-left ‘S&D’ group’s Spanish chair, Iratxe García Pérez, referring to Russia’s autocratic president Vladimir Putin.

French liberal MEP Valérie Hayer said it was “disgusting” that Orbán’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, was telegraphing internal EU meetings to Moscow.

“The people on the far right are your enemies … yet still, you [the EU’s centre-right ‘EPP’ group] work with them,” said Dutch Green MEP Terry Reintke, referring to the EPP ‘s voting with Orbán-linked parties on migration and climate files.

“When will you finally make a cut on working with these people”, Reintke said.

A Czech MEP from Orbán’s ‘Patriots for Europe’ group, Jana Nagyová, defended him, saying that Szijjártó’s wiretapping and EU financial pressure on Budapest ahead of the election, in which Orbán’s Fidesz party was polling behind the opposition Tisza, was illicit outside “interference” in Hungarian democracy.

Meanwhile, Spanish centre-right MEP Dolors Montserrat used Wednesday’s parliament hearing to attack Spain’s leftwing prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, accusing him of exploiting the Iran war for “propaganda” by criticising US president Donald Trump.

But García Pérez, from Sánchez’s party, said it was the EPP which was “isolated” on its pro-Trump line in terms of the EU’s general public, while Sánchez “became the one who leads a clear response for the EU to defend … international law”.

Polish rightwing MEP Patryk Jaki also said the Iran war meant the EU should scrap its climate-change laws, using an eye-watering metaphor.

Keeping the EU’s flagship Emissions Trading System (ETS) CO2-reduction programme was like “putting make up on a zombie and sending it to the ball”, he said.

The ETS was also a “cancer” and EU industries were being “destroyed” by it, Jaki claimed.