Hungary recently blocked the EU’s 50 million Euro aid package to Ukraine that would have seen the country get a steady flow of EU money through 2027. This veto, together with the $61 billion deadlocked in the US Congress does not bode well for Ukraine. America is still grappling with their southern border issue, which Biden refuses to allocate funds for and now Hungary has thrown a big spanner into the works. The EU has been withholding $30 billion of funding from Hungary since last year. This money was regarded as something like a financial sanction to force Hungary to change policy and follow the EU Commission’s proposals. However, Orban remains defiant and is quoted as saying, “Hungary doesn’t want to be the pupil of another power, it wants to be its own master. (…) We need to be radical to succeed”.
This is exactly what Orban has been doing by following an independent foreign policy – brazenly different to that of the EU. They are one of the last EU members to still buy lots of Russian gas and they’re still expanding relations with China, from whom the rest of the EU is focused on decoupling away. Orban also recently met with Putin in Beijing and his latest move was to block Ukraine’s aid money as well. Needless to say, the last three months have been especially concerning for the Euro Zone vis a vis Hungary.
If we were to speculate further, we see only two routes left for the EU when it comes to the Ukraine Aid — either the EU passes the 50-billion-dollar aid package with or without Orban or it does the “unthinkable” and they use the frozen assets of Russia, which it will use to fund Ukraine’s needs. The last option would drastically reduce Europe’s reputation in the world as a reliable place to store money.
Photo by EPA-EFE/STEPHANIE LECOCQ