Six minutes. This is how long, officially, “the Orbán show” has lasted, as many diplomats privately refer to the Hungarian prime minister’s irritating tendency to be the center of attention at every summit, in this case with his threat to veto the reform of the community budget that will allow Ukraine to receive 50 billion euros from the European Union, crucial aid to keep its administration running for the next four years and resist Russian aggression.
In reality, everything has been at stake before the start of the summit: weeks of intense technical negotiations, political and economic pressure with tools never seen before, last-minute discussions last night between some European leaders… This morning, a restricted meeting of the leaders of Germany, France and Italy and the leaders of the community institutions with Viktor Orbán has allowed the agreement to be closed. Once it was confirmed that Budapest would give the green light to the text, the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, called the leaders of the Baltic countries and, later, a group that included the president of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez and the Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, and the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, to verify that they also supported the compromise text.
With everything tied up, Michel presented the agreement to the leaders in the first plenary session of the summit and minutes later he announced that an agreement had been reached “unanimously” on macro-financial aid to Kyiv that has the support of “everyone.” the leaders” of the 27 member states. “The EU assumes a leadership and responsibility role in supporting Ukraine, we know what we are at stake,” the President of the Council tweeted. The political agreement reached today allows the procedures for the reform of the community budget to advance, which must be approved by the European Parliament. The European Commission estimates that at the end of the month it will be able to make the first payments to Ukraine, just in time to prevent the country from facing serious liquidity problems.
Two amendments to the draft conclusions of the summit have allowed Orbán to save face and lift his veto of the agreement, which he already blocked in December, explain European diplomatic sources. The first, provides for the European Council to evaluate the use of aid on an annual basis. from the EU to Kyiv but without the possibility of voting (and vetoing) its renewal each year, as Budapest demanded; Something easy for the Twenty-Seven to assume but that gives oxygen to the Hungarian leader is also foreseen, proposing that in two years, when the EU negotiates its next budget, financial assistance to the country be reviewed.
At Orbán’s request, the latest draft conclusions of the summit recall the commitment reached in December 2020 that the conditionality mechanisms for access to community aid be applied objectively and impartially, a clarification that the Hungarian Government hopes will give you help unblock the 20 billion euros that the European Commission, in application of different regulations, keeps frozen due to repeated violations of the rule of law in the Magyar country. “Nothing is changed, only what was agreed is remembered,” European diplomatic sources emphasize.
This clarification occurs within the framework of the unprecedented threat made to Orbán through diplomatic channels that the EU is considering fully applying Article 7 of the treaty and proposing to withdraw Hungary’s voting right in the Council for its violations of the principles and EU values. It is the so-called ‘nuclear button’ of the EU, it has never been applied and although Hungary has been left without Poland’s protection, it demands that the other 26 countries support it. It is not clear that there is unanimity to do so but the threat, more than ever, is on the table as a result of the growing frustration of Orbán’s obstructionist tactics, as demonstrated by the leak of an internal Council note that reviewed possible ways to boycott the economy. Hungarian.
