One of lime and another of sand. Although European leaders managed to find a formula to circumvent Hungary’s announced veto of the proposal to open accession negotiations with Ukraine, inviting their prime minister to leave the room for a few minutes so they could decide without him, Viktor Orbán remained firm in its refusal to adopt the proposal to review the community budget negotiated yesterday until after three in the morning and which provides 50 billion euros to support Kyiv for the next four years.
The euphoria generated by the agreement to give the green light to accession negotiations with Ukraine fueled hopes of reaching a solution on the budget as well. But the reality is that while the decision on the expansion is historic, the blockage of the second is nothing more than a technical setback that will be resolved in a few weeks. “There are 26 leaders in agreement on all components” of the proposal, the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, announced to the press this morning. “I want to work with colleagues in the coming days and weeks to prepare for a summit that will take place early next year.”
The Twenty-seven – which could resort to an intergovernmental formula if Budapest continues not to accept the proposal that is currently on the table, but about which Sweden must still consult its parliament – have assured Ukraine that it is only a postponement, nothing that calls into question its financial support for the country, more necessary than ever in the face of the problems of the United States to unlock funds for 2024.
“We need a few more weeks to reach an agreement,” but “our message to Ukraine is that we will be there to support them, we just need to resolve a few details,” stressed this morning the Prime Minister of Belgium, Alexandre De Croo. Although adopted thanks to Orbán’s abstention, “the decision binds the Twenty-Seven” and “it is a very important message that we give to the Ukrainians, to Moscow and to the rest of the world, that in a moment as difficult as this the Europeans “We are on the side of Ukraine and more united than ever, and that our support will not disappear.”
Regarding the budget review, demanded by the European Commission after verifying that as a result of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine there are not enough funds to reach 2027, Michel plans to convene an extraordinary European Council in January or February 2024. The objective it remains that the decision can be made with the support of all 27 member states. But for Budapest, this issue, the community budget, is directly linked to the decision of the European Commission to keep some 20 billion euros in aid frozen due to the rule of law situation in Hungary.
“If the leaders want to approve a budget review,” Orbán’s team said this morning, they will have to find “a solution” to Hungary’s problem, since in their opinion it has already done everything “constitutionally possible” to meet the established conditions through Brussels.
Although the Hungarian blockade was the ultimate reason why further progress could not be made last night, Germany and the Netherlands had already warned in recent weeks that more time would be needed to agree on the budget review, and that the urgency was not that great. as Brussels proposed, beyond making it clear that Kyiv will receive the promised aid. The last proposal that Michel put on the table yesterday would require the Twenty-Seven to contribute an additional 21 billion euros to the common budget, instead of the 60 billion that the European Commission initially requested.
The document reallocates 10.6 billion euros from different items to cover possible gaps, such as those derived from the increased cost of increased interest, or priorities such as immigration, a concept for which an additional 9.6 billion euros are allocated.
