Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks during his state-of-the-nation address in Budapest, Hungary, February 10, 2017. PHOTO: REUTERS/FILE
BRUSSELS:
EU leaders failed to persuade Hungary’s Viktor Orban to lift his block on a massive loan to support Ukraine’s war effort at summit talks on Thursday, leaving the much-needed funding in limbo.
Moscow’s closest partner in the bloc, the nationalist prime minister has long resisted helping Kyiv to repel Russia’s invasion, stalling EU aid and repeated rounds of sanctions.
This time around, Orban is holding up a 90-billion-euro ($104 billion) loan as leverage in a feud over damage to a pipeline running through Ukraine — which has choked the flow of Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia.
“No oil = no money,” the Hungarian leader posted on X after the talks, which Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed by videolink to plead for the funds’ release.
Orban had made it clear he planned to play hardball, as he leans into anti-EU and anti-Ukrainian narratives ahead of close-fought national elections on April 12.
That has exasperated his fellow EU leaders, and despite concerted pressure from his counterparts, he refused to budge.
“I held my ground and we are exactly where we were this morning: if there is oil, there will be money,” Orban wrote.
The EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas warned earlier it was “really, really time” to show support for Ukraine by unlocking the funding for this year and the next — which Hungary’s leader signed up to in December along with the rest of the bloc.
Zelensky doubled down, warning: “This is critical for us. It is a resource to protect lives.”
But only 25 of the bloc’s 27 leaders endorsed summit conclusions reaffirming their intent over the funds from next month, with Budapest and Bratislava the two holdouts.
Leaders agreed to revisit the matter, which requires unanimity, at their next planned meeting in late April.
At the root of the standoff is a weeks-long dispute in which landlocked Hungary and Slovakia accuse Ukraine of stalling on pipeline repairs — while Zelensky has branded linking the issue to support for Kyiv’s war effort “blackmail”.
The European Commission moved this week to unblock the situation by sending a team to help restore oil transit, but Orban dismissed the scheme as a “fairy tale”.
