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By Brendan Cole
Senior Reporter
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The EU's move to sidestep Hungary's veto on giving aid to Ukraine has shown Brussels' impatience with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his waning influence in lobbying for Russia, a former Hungarian foreign minister has told Newsweek.
The announcement that Ukraine may get the proceeds from frozen Russian funds comes in a good week for Kyiv, which has formally started the EU accession process.
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, around €210 billion ($224 billion) of Russian assets has been frozen in the EU, mostly in Belgium. Brussels agreed in May to use the profits generated to purchase arms for Kyiv.
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However, Hungary, whose prime minister, Orbán, is Putin's closest ally in the EU, has been blocking the move, along with other decisions by Brussels that are linked with arming Kyiv against Russian aggression.
However, the EU has devised a legal workaround, with the bloc's chief Josep Borrel telling the U.K. newspaper Financial Times that, because Budapest had abstained from an earlier EU agreement, it "should not be part" of giving the proceeds from the frozen funds to Kyiv.
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"The majority of the European Union member states are fed up with the veto tactics of Mr. Orbán at various occasions and his foreign minister," Péter Balázs, Hungarian foreign minister from 2009 to 2010, told Newsweek.
Balázs, emeritus professor at Budapest's Central European University (CEU), said it was significant that, last December at the European Summit, the other EU member states asked Orbán to go out for a coffee during a vote on EU membership talks for Kyiv.
"In diplomacy, we call it a 'constructive abstention.' You are not preventing the others to act, but you are not part of the decision and you do not take obligations in that respect," Balázs said.
"That happened in a friendly way last December and in a more serious form on February 1 at the following EU summit meeting when Orbán was asked to stay in the room to vote yes for a package for Ukraine."
Hungary had also initially opposed Sweden's membership of NATO, as well as the nomination of its new secretary-general, Mark Rutte. Balázs said that Orbán had been a key figure "in representing the interests of Russia within the whole trans-Atlantic community—NATO and the EU. Now the other members have found some techniques to isolate that and to act without Orbán and his government."
The EU's chief diplomat Borrell said 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in windfall profits would be available in the coming month and another 1 billion euros ($1.07 billion) by the end of 2024 to help Kyiv with air defense, ammunition and support for Ukrainian industry.
The Financial Times reported that the legal workaround was discussed on Monday by EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg because of Hungary's previous abstention from an earlier agreement to set aside the proceeds from Russia's frozen assets.
The move could also help the G7 group of the world's biggest economies to raise a $50 billion loan for Kyiv by December to be paid off by the future proceeds.
Newsweek has contacted the Hungarian Foreign Ministry for comment, but Budapest has described the move as "a shameless breach of common European rules."
"Our EU legal team is examining the possibility of a legal way to seek justice for Hungary," said Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó in a Facebook post.
European Accession Talks
Ukraine's accession negotiations started at an intergovernmental conference in Luxembourg on Tuesday, in what Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal described as "a historic day." Moldova also formally kicked off the accession process to the bloc.
Both Ukraine and Moldova had applied to join the EU soon after Putin's full-scale invasion in February 2022. Moldova's breakaway region, Transnistria, still has close ties with Moscow, and a Russian-backed political grouping in Chisinau is said to be trying to destabilize the former Soviet country as it seeks EU membership.
"The start of negotiations on the same day with Ukraine and Moldova indicates that both countries remain in a package for the moment," said Dionis Cenusa, a risk analyst with the Lithuania-based Eastern Europe Studies Center. "This shows that the EU is not willing to divide the two countries at this time," he told Newsweek.
"Since Ukraine benefits from special treatment, the Moldovan government must behave and demonstrate good performance in implementing reforms so as not to be decoupled and left behind, unless it is outperforming Ukraine and has objective reasons to move forward," Cenusa said.
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