{"id":837374,"date":"2026-03-20T01:35:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T01:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/837374\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T01:35:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T01:35:14","slug":"eu-leaders-enraged-as-summit-ends-with-orban-vetoing-e90bn-ukraine-aid-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/837374\/","title":{"rendered":"EU leaders enraged as summit ends with Orb\u00e1n vetoing \u20ac90bn Ukraine aid \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

EU leaders raged at Viktor Orb\u00e1n 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened today in the European Council cannot simply be accepted,\u201d German chancellor Friedrich Merz told press at the end of the summit just after midnight on Friday morning (20 March).<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will have consequences that go far beyond this single event,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cColleagues who have been members of the European Council far longer than I have were deeply angered by what happened today,\u201d Merz concluded. \u201cIt is an act of serious disloyalty within the European Union.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody can blackmail the European Council or EU institutions,\u201d EU Council president Ant\u00f3nio Costa echoed, after the summit concluded.<\/p>\n

In an effort to persuade Orb\u00e1n to allow the Kyiv decision to proceed without Hungary\u2019s blocking, Merz noted that under EU rules, member states could \u201cunanimously agree that certain decisions may subsequently be taken by qualified majority. [But] Viktor Orb\u00e1n was not prepared to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the third month now, the most important financial security guarantee for Ukraine from Europe is not working \u2014 the \u20ac90bn support package for this year and the next,\u201d Zelensky told EU leaders earlier on Thursday during the summit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is critical for us. It is a resource to protect lives,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven today, we do not know for sure whether this support will be unblocked,\u201d Zelensky added.<\/p>\n

Earlier on Thursday, EU leaders agreed on wording<\/a> to support the war-torn country without the backing of Budapest or Bratislava \u2014 a situation that already occurred at December\u2019s summit.<\/p>\n

90-minute talks<\/p>\n

After 90-minute discussions in Brussels, no solution was found to ensure a quick disbursement to Ukraine of the much-needed \u20ac90bn loan.<\/p>\n

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n has linked lifting his veto on the Ukrainian aid package to repairing a\u00a0Soviet-era oil pipeline carrying Russian oil<\/a>, even though a legal deadline to stop the import of Russian fossil fuels is approaching. Slovakia is supporting Hungary in this endeavour.<\/p>\n

Orb\u00e1n is facing an election on April 12 where he trails in the polls to the opposition Tisza party.<\/p>\n

Costa emphasised that Russia has attacked this pipeline 23 times and that Urkiane is still willing to repair it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On top of that, Orb\u00e1n 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.<\/p>\n

Costa had criticised Orb\u00e1n\u2019s veto on Ukraine aid as \u201cunacceptable\u201d during the summit, according to an EU official. The same wording was also echoed by several delegations in briefings ahead of the meeting.<\/p>\n

Back in December, EU leaders decided not to use Russian frozen assets to assist Ukraine, instead agreeing on a \u20ac90bn loan \u2014 without the involvement of Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n

\u2018No Oil, No Money\u2019 \u2013 and one upcoming election<\/p>\n

Orb\u00e1n\u2019s slogan, widely seen as a domestic electoral move, is: \u201cNo Oil, No Money\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIts restoration depends exclusively on Ukraine\u2019s capacity to repair it and on Russia\u2019s willingness not to destroy it again,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Zelensky has just committed to fully restore the flow of oil as soon as possible,\u201d the official also said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But a letter by Zelensky published on Tuesday indicates that reparation works would take at least \u201ca month and a half\u201d \u2014 past Orb\u00e1n\u2019s election date.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Earlier this week,\u00a0EU institutions reached a deal with Kyiv<\/a>\u00a0to 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Slovakian PM Robert Fico said that during the meeting with his counterparts, he had raised the question of whether the EU was too \u201cweak\u201d to persuade Zelensky, or whether this was \u201can intentional effort to definitively cut off Slovakia and Hungary from supplies of Russian oil?\u201d<\/p>\n

Fico also said that Zelensky was \u201cillegitimately interfering in the election campaign in Hungary, with the aim of replacing the current Hungarian government\u201d.<\/p>\n

No Plan B<\/p>\n

No plan B has been envisioned so far, as officials argue that there is no legally visible path to bypass Orb\u00e1n\u2019s veto this time.<\/p>\n

Last month, the\u00a0International Monetary Fund (IMF) disbursed $1.5bn\u00a0to keep the country running.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s \u20ac90bn loan was unblocked.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EU leaders raged at Viktor Orb\u00e1n on Thursday night, as they failed to convince Hungary to lift its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":837375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[217083,2000,299,218484,226348,218481,239342,237281,239340,226346,218479,237279,218482,239341,226347,218480,237280,218483,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-837374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-typedefinedterm","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-identifier24","12":"tag-identifier4278","13":"tag-identifier4308","14":"tag-identifier4390","15":"tag-identifier4414","16":"tag-nameeu-summit","17":"tag-namehungary","18":"tag-namerussia","19":"tag-nameslovakia","20":"tag-nameukraine","21":"tag-termcodeeu-summit","22":"tag-termcodehungary","23":"tag-termcoderussia","24":"tag-termcodeslovakia","25":"tag-termcodeukraine","26":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116258938998244826","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837374","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=837374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}