At the ongoing EU summit, European leaders decided to start EU membership negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova and to grant candidate status to Georgia.
Hungary opposes the negotiations starting with Kiev, but did not veto the move. However, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán published a message on Facebook in which he distanced himself from the other 26 EU leaders.
In the video, he said that they had a big discussion about Ukraine's European Union membership for about eight hours.
"Hungary's position is clear, Ukraine is not prepared for us to start negotiations on EU membership with it. It is a completely senseless, irrational and incorrect decision to start negotiations with Ukraine under these circumstances, and Hungary will not change its position," said Viktor Orbán.
"On the other hand, 26 other countries insisted that this decision be made. Therefore, Hungary has decided that if the 26 decide this way, they should go their own way, Hungary does not want to share in this bad decision, that is why Hungary stayed away from the decision today," the Hungarian Prime Minister announced, adding that the negotiations with the amendment of the budget they continue.
"Hungary's position is clear: we do not consider Ukraine to be prepared for the European Union negotiations, which is why we recommend that the negotiations do not start," declared Balázs Orbán during the EU summit in Brussels.
However, the prime minister's political director pointed out: 26 EU member states think differently about this situation, so after the negotiations
Hungary decided to leave the meeting room and not participate in the vote.
This does not prevent you from making a decision, but you also do not take responsibility for this faulty decision.
Balázs Orbán also noted that this is a principled decision, and long decision-making processes will take place in the future.
After that, the member states must give their unanimous consent even to the compilation of the specific negotiation package, and in the following years, during the negotiation process, at least seventy places must support Ukraine's accession to the European Union by unanimous decision-making.
The prime minister's political director emphasized that Hungary still does not support or agree with the start of negotiations, therefore the government maintains the Hungarian position on the EU scene as well.
Cover image: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (j4), Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov (j5), Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer (j2) and Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob (j) at the two-day meeting of the heads of state and government of the European Union member states in Brussels on December 14, 2023 .
Source: MTI/Prime Minister's Press Office/Zoltán Fischer
