European Union leaders prepare for a key meeting dominated by a second attempt to pass a 50 billion euro ($54 billion) EU budget amendment that would provide financial aid to Ukraine for the next four years. proceeding.
The amendments, along with 20 billion euros ($21.7 billion) in military aid to Ukraine in 2024, were vetoed by Hungary at a regular summit in December.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, has offered Prime Minister Viktor Orban an opportunity to block the continuation of aid next year, when the EU will assess whether Ukraine still needs funds and meets its requirements. It reportedly hopes to include Hungary in Thursday's meeting. to receive it.
EU support is key to Ukraine's war effort.
Since the war began almost two years ago, the bloc has spent more than 40 billion euros ($43 billion) to support Ukraine's budget, with an additional 17 billion euros ($18.4 billion) supporting millions of Ukrainians. In addition, it has spent 27 billion euros ($29 billion) on military aid. Refugees in Europe.
This year, Ukraine's budget faces a $48 billion shortfall.
There are also more forceful approaches.
This month, the European Parliament condemned Prime Minister Orban's December veto and called on the European Council, made up of EU government leaders, to investigate Hungary's “serious and persistent violations of EU values.” requested that it be done.
This would require the Council, which still exercises ultimate authority within the EU, to trigger a procedure that could ultimately end Hungary's voting rights and strip it of its veto power.
However, Europe filed such a case against Hungary in 2018, known as Article 7, but it failed because the system required unanimity of the Council and Poland supported Hungary.
Poland has a new center-left government that is friendly to Ukraine and is no longer aligned with Orbán, but Slovakia brought Robert Fico's Smer party to power last year, making it impossible to hide Orbán. It made me happy.
Both men are Eurosceptic and have hostile relations with Brussels. Mr. Fico suspended military aid to Ukraine immediately after he took office and announced his support for Mr. Orban this month.
“I never agree that a country that fought for its sovereignty should be punished. I will never agree to such an attack on Hungary,” he said at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Orban.
“That doesn't work.”
“Article 7 requires a consensus that all member states support it, but Slovakia does not support it and almost certainly neither the Netherlands will support it. I therefore argue that it will not pass.”Eastern Europe Katalin Mikrosi, a lecturer at the University of Helsinki in research, told Al Jazeera.
The top vote-getter in last year's Dutch parliamentary elections was far-right leader Geert Wilders' party, which has not yet formed a government, but has also argued that aid to Ukraine should be cut. There is.
EU member states could continue to provide aid through special measures outside the regular budget, which Prime Minister Orban has said he would not oppose, or by allowing member states to support Ukraine bilaterally. .
These approaches have drawbacks. They are more expensive, take away the EU's single voice in foreign policy, and make the EU appear weaker as wars rage on European soil. They have failed to address Hungary's own problems, which the European Parliament has called an “electoral dictatorship” that runs counter to EU values. EU aid of 30 billion euros ($32.5 billion) has already been suspended due to judicial manipulation and suppression of free speech and minority rights.
Most importantly from a practical point of view, these approaches do not lock in aid at a time when the EU is largely comprised of governments and the European Parliament that are willing to help Ukraine. Many observers expect June's European elections to produce a parliament with a less favorable attitude towards Kiev, and Orbán may be counting on that.
“Unfortunately, Viktor Orbán read his cards correctly,” Miklosi said. “He understands that the winds are changing in the EU. There are voices in the EU who want Ukrainians to come to the table and negotiate peace with Russia because they can't afford to support Ukraine forever.” It's increasing.”
In this view, Orbán will wait for eurosceptic governments to take office this fall in Austria, where the far-right Freedom Party has led in opinion polls for a year, and next year in Germany, where the far-right Alternative for Germany has doubled in support. There is. For the past 18 months, it has ranked second in opinion polls behind the Christian Democratic Union.
A poll released this month by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) suggests that Orbán may be right about developments in Europe. The results showed that in nine European countries, fear of climate change, pandemics, immigration, and global financial instability all exceeded Ukraine's fear of survival.
“What we were worried about was that there were definitely going to be politicians who would try to ride this trend and say publicly that they needed to stop supporting Ukraine. ECFR said: Pavel Zerka told Al Jazeera.
Reduce support?
Mr. Orbán, Mr. Fico and Mr. Wilders all pose as peace mediators.
In a May 2022 poll, the ECFR reveals that a larger group of Europeans supports peace at the cost of partitioning Ukraine than support justice, where Ukraine fights to regain all its territory. did.
Last March, the justice camp defeated the peace camp 38 to 29. ECFR attributes this to successes on the battlefield in Ukraine, unity between the left and right on Ukraine, and strong US leadership.
Zerka said the pendulum now appears to be swinging back in favor of the peace camp, as two of those factors – the US role and battlefield successes – are “starting to evaporate.”
Like the EU, the US also delayed approving military aid to Ukraine this year.
British historian Mark Galeotti agreed that the US factor was key.
“If the Americans really started to reduce their aid to Ukraine, it would be a challenge for many European countries to think, 'Well, what can we do?' instead of thinking, 'We should actually reduce our aid to Ukraine.' It's going to be an excuse to say, 'I don't have any.'” Rising to the challenge. After all, this is our continent,” Galeotti recently said on the podcast Futucast.
Hungary made a different choice
For Hungary at least, opposition to Ukraine means more than just collecting votes.
Hungary has attracted Chinese and Russian investment since Mr. Orbán took power in 2010.
In 2013, Hungary became the first country outside China to sell renminbi-denominated bonds on the international market. Four years later, China became the first Eastern European country to sell renminbi-denominated bonds domestically.
Jens Bastian, a researcher at the German Institute for International Security Studies, told Al Jazeera that building a relationship with China in financial terms has worked.
“[Hungary and Serbia] “China will become the main recipient of Chinese direct investment in Central and Eastern Europe in 2023,” Bastian said.
China is building and partially financing a high-speed railway linking Budapest and Belgrade. Chinese electric vehicle battery manufacturer CATL is investing $7.6 billion to build a battery factory in the Hungarian city of Debrecen.
“It will be the largest battery facility in Europe. It will be CATL's single largest overseas investment and its second facility in Hungary,” Bastian said.
Mikrossi said Hungary is seeking cheap energy as it invests in its manufacturing economy, and has joined landlocked EU member states (Slovakia, Austria and the Czech Republic) in fighting for exemption from the 2022 ban on Russian oil imports. ).
Bastian said some of these countries amounted to “an unwilling axis of EU and NATO members who are effectively following President Putin's orders.”
For example, in addition to vetoing aid to Ukraine last month, President Orbán forced Bulgaria to increase transit fees for Russian gas destined for Serbia and Hungary.
But what appears to be an economic benefit also has political significance, Bastian said.
“They are showing multilateral institutions such as the EU, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund and the European Investment Bank that 'we are looking for alternatives and we have succeeded in finding them.' ”
why? Because “Mr. Orban and Mr. Fico want a completely different EU, one that is not based on the rule of law,” Timofi Milovanov, director of the Kyiv School of Economics, told Al Jazeera.
“It's…a group of countries with authoritarian populist leaders. They don't want to leave the EU. They want to change the rules. They want to play by Brussels' rules. It’s not there.”
