A large number of EU resolutions on Ukraine are being blocked by Hungary, said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis.
Hungary is digging in and refusing to wave through billions in military aid for Ukraine, prompting growing dismay among other EU countries.
"I have to calm myself [when] I talk about this issue, because it’s getting really ridiculous now,” a senior EU diplomat said of the standoff with Hungary, speaking before Monday’s meeting of EU foreign ministers. “What’s happening is outrageous.”
Diplomats had hoped to have a new €6.6 billion package ready ahead of this week’s meetings of foreign and defense ministers in Brussels. The deal included €860 million for arms procurement, reported by POLITICO last week.
It is time to develop a way to remove nations who clearly don’t have the EU’s best interest at heart. Hungary is long overdue to be bounced from the EU.
While I understand the sentiment, such action doesn’t match the long term goals of the bloc to unify the continent. Another solution needs to be found to ensure single bad actors cannot hold up actions which severely impact the remaining stakeholders - I have no idea how it could be done though.
Xoxo, Another useless armchair observer
I think that is a fair point. One possible option would be to withhold any financial assistance to Hungary. As of 2021, they cost the EU 4.2 billion euros (https://www.statista.com/chart/18794/net-contributors-to-eu-budget/).
Noice. That makes €10.8billion for Ukraine.
Ukraine isn’t in the EU.
Correct. But if we stop blowing money on Orban and his cronies, then it can be sent to Ukraine instead.
Yeah, and they’d be a much, much better partner.
Another long term goal of the EU is to promote peace and democracy across Europe.
Allowing Orbàn to further democratic backsliding at home and undermining of the EU’s democratic processes and missions goes contrary to that goal, and the usual withholding of EU funding isn’t a sentence at all to a quasi-dictator who revels in the fact that reduced funding means more social misery means easy elections for a populist who blames every problem on the EU.
Kicking out Hungary is a solution of last resort and we aren’t there yet, but in a system where Member States could turn totalitarian (and as Sovereign states we have no legal means to force out a dictator), exclusion must be on the table if we are to uphold our democratic values.
This is what makes the EU dysfunctional - there is not a way to bounce a member from the EU nor a way to override a member states veto. The state can even veto changes to try and override vetos.
The EU continues to exist in a black hole between a super state and a club of nations. Until it resolves that long standing conflict small states like Hungary can hold the whole EU hostage to its demands.
The problem is you’d have to override national sovereignty to get rid of Hungary and once you do that the EU suddenly looks much less democratic. The EU may be too big to force such a fundamental change through now.
The solution to the current problem is obvious - European nations should bypass the EU to provide funds for Ukraine. But that is not palatable to the EU as it undermines the EU itself, making it irrelevant to an area it’s trying to take control of - security.
they need to get rid of the 100% thing. two thirds and three fourths majority is hard enough.
looks like it’s easy for their politicians to choose between Victor or Ban?
FUCK Hungary, kick them the fuck out already goddamn.
The EU isn’t going to kick out their scapegoat. Countries are perfectly capable of coordinating and sending aid without an EU resolution. If Germany, France, or anyone else wanted to send aid it would be in transit already.
Hungary is just waiting for another kick back before they give the green light. And they’ll get it, just like they did last time.
But there’s legitimately more to the EU than just two dozen countries agreeing to disagree. Unified support means opening Hungary up for logistical support as well. As a Ukrainian neighbor that’s also bordering the central European powers, their pivotal for moving materials into Ukraine.
Turkey is in the EU?
Haha, you right, my brain went to nato
Why can’t we just let every country give individual aid to Ukraine to circumvent this?
Hungary can suck on Pootins shoes all it wants, it can’t influence other countries.
Hungary is aligned with Putin against the EU.
IF the EU won’t admit that, won’t deal-with that, THEN the EU will be more-completely-butchered when Trump guts NATO & backs his buddy Putin.
Natural Selection™ in action, people: they need to face actuality & grow the fuck up:
kick Hungary out.
Immediately.
They’re actively treachery against the EU, DEAL WITH IT!!
( morons “willingly going to the seconary-crime-scene in the hopes of using social-process to make things go better, there”…
WHEN SOMEONE IS TAKING YOU TO A SECONDARY-CRIME-SCENE, YOU ARE GOING TO BE BUTCHERED THERE: FIGHT TO THE DEATH IMMEDIATELY.
That has been explained by good-cops for many many many years.
Nobody learns.
Natural Selection is going to be unnecessarily pruning extra European lives, as a result of the EU’s retardedness, in the coming decade. )
Yep, Orban is a full blown dictator endorsed by Putin, if Trump wins, Europe will be in big trouble.
If NATO falls apart and the top 2 world powers become allied military expansionist dictatorships (China and Russia) then there will certainly be a natural selection against mankind for the first real time in history. It could be an apocalypse we as a species are unfit to survive. A sudden tip of the scale in favor of domination will ignite the world.
Most of Mankind is not American and even in a perfect Democracy (which the US is not, not even in the same universe as one) the leaders only ever have a duty towards the citizens of that Democracy - i.e. the voters - not the rest of Mankind.
Basically, for any person who lives outside a big and military powerful country, that country is just as bad being a Democracy as it is being an Authoritarian regime because both kinds of regimes don’t give a rat’s arse about outsiders. I mean, the leaders in the Democracy will naturally use beautifull words and say they “really do care” - because they’re politicians trained to talk a pretty talk in order to win elections - but when it comes what they actually think and do they care just as little as the Authoritarian ones.
The only reason why Democracies are a bit safer to be around of is because, if they’re real Democracies (i.e. have the interests of all of their citizens as top priority rather than being “vote for which agent of the oligarchs you would like to have” like America) they’re way less likelly to initiate wars without significant upsides because it’s not in the interest of that country’s citizens to suffer due to War, whilst Authoritarian regimes will happilly sacrifice their population in a War if that is good for the leader(s).
So the reality is that for Mankind it’s unclear if the end of Pax Americana will be a good thing, a bad thing or just a change of assholes.
There are 3 great military powers on this earth: China, Russia, and NATO. Of those, the only one whose expansion involves voluntary action from the joining member is NATO. Of those, the only one that doesn’t aggressively consume neighboring nations is NATO.
Without NATO, the other two would begin moving to conquer the Earth. We have only experienced less than a century of peace solely due to a very carefully balanced scale of military might. That time of peace will end the moment NATO falls. Hundreds of Millions will die in the resulting decades, entire ecosystems will be destroyed in fire.
The threat to Democracy isn’t the loss of America, if you ever thought that was the point then you’re a moron. The threat to Democracy is the rise of Russia and China.
You original argument wasn’t about what’s good for “Democracy”, it was about what’s good for “Mankind” - they’re quite different things: as I pointed out, Democracy somewhere, even if perfect, isn’t good for people elsewhere (because it doesn’t represent them at all), and that’s without going into the whole point of “Is a Democracy which is deeply subverted (like in the US at the moment) actually a good thing even for the locals?” or maybe “How subverted must a Democracy be before it turns into a bad thing even for locals?”.
I think your NATO point is indirectly largelly about America because most of the military power in NATO is that of the US and if NATO collapsed without an American power collapse (or just America turning isolationist), America would still be a major military power in its own right, and the EU (which does have a mutual defense part in its treaties, but which not really used ATM because NATO exists and works) would be as well (and a NATO collapse would force strengthening EU internal military cooperation, something which people like Macron have already been pushing for) and they would be facing the likes of Russia and China with parity and would likely align as two big blocks when need just like China aligns with Russia because of convenience, not mutual love.
The other alternative NATO collapse scenario, what I call the nasty scenario, would be a total collapse of whatever is left of Democracy in America (in turn leading to a collapse of NATO) or at least extreme isolationism, which would leave EU vs China (+Russia as its poodle) and America in “splenderous” isolationism or worse. However in that scenario my point still stands that for all the unalligned nations in the World it wouldn’t really matter if dominance was of “Democratic” nations or “Authoritarian” ones because neither regime represents foreigners.
I do however agree that the secret for stability for Mankind is a multipolar world, not because one side is “Democratic” but because when there are more than one dominant side, attacks against unalligned little guys by one of the sides tend to pull in support from other sides of the multi-pollar world, making them far more risky than they would be in a World with a single dominant power.
If you don’t think Democracy is what is good for Mankind then you’re an absolute buffoon beyond reasoning with.
Well, you definitelly come through as genious capable of profound thinking and not at all as a simpleton who only ever reads the covers of books.
And you appear as a well read individual who certainly thinks for themselves as a capable and dependable defender of the weak against tyranny. /s
This is the best summary I could come up with:
BRUSSELS — Hungary is digging in and refusing to wave through billions in military aid for Ukraine, prompting growing dismay among other EU countries.
Budapest, the EU’s most pro-Russian member, has blocked partial reimbursements for arms sent to Ukraine under the off-budget European Peace Facility (EPF) for almost a year.
There was a political agreement a few weeks ago to allow for the creation of the €5 billion Ukraine Assistance Fund under the EPF, but in recent days Hungary has again been hunting for reasons to kill the whole package.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who often clashes with Szijjártó, said all of the EU is paying a price for supporting Ukraine, citing the example of energy.
After the meeting, Szijjártó warned of an “insane” idea of imposing compulsory conscription across Europe to bolster Ukraine’s diminishing manpower, saying Hungary wanted no part of such a scheme.
Ministers from the Baltics, as well as EU top diplomat Josep Borrell, asked Szijjártó for more details on the alleged discrimination that Hungarian companies faced, and also criticized Budapest.
The original article contains 717 words, the summary contains 175 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Can’t the EU ‘suspend’ Hungary’s membership until Orban the dictator is removed from office?
Hungary needs to get their shit together, or Ukraine will be the least of the worries when they are shown the door or have funding slashed, lol.
I can guarantee life in the EU is better than that of a vassal state of Russia.
Better for the average Hungarian, not for the Russian shill in power.
Hungry Hungary
the EU needs to cast out Hungary.
It is not a situation that lends itself to simple views. A diplomatic solution would likely be so much more ideal that it’s worth eating a little shit to get it.
The EU is great because the alternative is a more tenuous grasp on peace. The EU is also not so great because there are a lot of bad things that are better than WWIII.
It’s paywalled
No it isn’t
