Hungary\u2019s threat to veto the loan is a major setback for Ukraine, whose\u00a0coffers will begin running low on cash from April. Kyiv will struggle to sustain its war effort without fresh funds, leaving it at a disadvantage in ongoing peace talks with Russia.<\/p>\n
The first signs of trouble began earlier in the day on Friday. Hungary\u2019s ambassador to the EU\u00a0demanded that its national assembly get the standard eight weeks to scrutinize EU legislation during a meeting of\u00a0envoys\u00a0in Brussels,\u00a0three EU diplomats told POLITICO.<\/p>\n
EU ambassadors were set to give their final approval for the loan ahead of Tuesday, which marks the four-year anniversary of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
In a fresh confrontation with Kyiv,\u00a0Orb\u00e1n is\u00a0accusing the war-torn country of halting Russian gas to Hungary for political reasons. Ukraine rejects these claims, arguing that Russian strikes have damaged the\u00a0energy infrastructure.<\/p>\n
The European Commission convened an emergency meeting earlier this week to solve the dispute over the Druzhba pipeline after Hungary and Slovakia retaliated by halting diesel supplies to Ukraine.<\/p>\n
EU leaders, including Orb\u00e1n, agreed to the \u20ac90 billion loan in December following months of fraught negotiations. In a major concession, the EU exempted Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia \u2015 who oppose giving further aid to Kyiv \u2015 from repaying the borrowing costs of the loan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hungary\u2019s threat to veto the loan is a major setback for Ukraine, whose\u00a0coffers will begin running low on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":778177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[17466,331,33108,52871,2000,299,5187,155245,20327,18421,1197,2441,332,7339,2663,657,1781,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-778176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-asset-management","9":"tag-banks","10":"tag-economic-governance","11":"tag-economic-sanctions","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-european","15":"tag-european-monetary-union","16":"tag-eurozone","17":"tag-finance-and-banking","18":"tag-investment","19":"tag-markets","20":"tag-russia","21":"tag-russia-sanctions","22":"tag-sanctions","23":"tag-ukraine","24":"tag-viktor-orban","25":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116105694719497129","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}