The leaders of Hungary and Slovakia said on Tuesday they agreed on the need to rework the European Union’s plan for financial aid to Ukraine.
After bilateral talks in Budapest, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said he agreed with Orbán’s position that the EU should not fund a planned 50 billion euro ($54 billion) aid package to Kyiv from the bloc’s overall budget, and repeated Orbán’s assertions that the war in Ukraine could not be solved militarily. Fico said:
We have listened very carefully to the proposals that Prime Minister (Orbán) … has already put forward in relation to the review of the budget and aid to Ukraine, and I will repeat that we consider them to be rational and sensible.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Tuesday that help for Ukraine should not damage the European Union’s budget. He told during the news conference:
If we want to help Ukraine, which I think we need to do, we have to do it in a way that doesn’t harm the EU’s budget. But to give away 50 billion euros from the EU budget for four years in advance is a violation of the EU’s sovereignty and national interests. We do not even know what will happen in a quarter of a year.
Orbán emphasised that any financial mechanism for Ukraine should be separate from the EU budget. According to him, Hungary’s proposal to set up such a mechanism is based on the distribution of aid based on gross national income (GNI). He added:
If Brussels accepts this, then there’ll be help for Ukraine, outside the budget. If not, then I’ll be sad to halt this process.
