Scholz defends procedural trick at EU summit

Unanimity is difficult to achieve in the EU. At the summit in Brussels it was only possible thanks to a coffee break for Hungary’s Prime Minister Orban. However, Chancellor Scholz does not want to establish this permanently. The EU Commission wants to continue to help Ukraine – even without Hungary.

The agreement at the EU summit on accession negotiations with Ukraine was only achieved without Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Because he left the room for a coffee break during the vote, the 26 remaining states were able to achieve a unanimous vote in favor of talks with Kiev. This cannot and should not become the rule, warned Chancellor Olaf Scholz after the meeting. “This is for special moments,” said the SPD politician.

Scholz supported the idea of ​​a short break for Orban in order to enable the member states to reach agreement on accession negotiations with Ukraine. He suggested this to the Hungarian head of government and after a period of reflection he agreed. “Then we made the decision, with 26 people in the room,” said Scholz. According to Scholz, it was “not a trick”, but an offer of help for Orban. A consensus and compromises would not “fall from heaven like the Holy Spirit”, they would have to be worked out.

The incumbent Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte had previously called the idea “brilliant”. French President Emmanuel Macron said after the summit that he expected Orban to “do his duty, behave like a European and not use political progress as a means of pressure.”

Criticism of Orban’s behavior

The fact that Orban announced further blockades after the summit created a bad mood among the other EU states. Belgium’s Prime Minister Alexander de Croo, for example, openly complained about Orban’s statements.

The chairman of the EPP group in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber, criticized Hungary’s blockade stance. Orban is behaving like the best representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the negotiating table in Brussels, Weber said Deutschlandfunk. You can no longer let Orban dance on your nose.

The EU Commission had proposed an increase in the EU budget to protect Ukraine from economic collapse. The money will be used to pay out pensions, run schools and organize accession negotiations with the EU. Military aid is not included.

A total of 50 billion euros should be budgeted for the project. 17 billion euros of this should flow as grants and 33 billion euros as loans. Germany would have received around one billion euros per year. But Orban blocked the payout.

Chancellor Scholz ruled out linking negotiations on aid to Ukraine with the release of frozen funds for Hungary. “There must be no connection between issues that are not related to each other,” he said after the two-day deliberations.

Von der Leyen promises Ukraine a solution

If Hungary blocks further aid for Ukraine, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a Plan B. “We are of course working very hard to achieve a result where there is agreement among the 27 member states.” But she wanted to examine alternatives, said von der Leyen.

A special summit on the billions in aid for Kiev is to be scheduled at the beginning of next year; the date is still open. Von der Leyen promised that her authority would find a feasible solution by then – “whatever happens at the summit.” Orban himself suggested that aid to Ukraine should not be included in the EU budget, but this was not well received by the other 26 summit participants. “It is possible that 26 member states will make the money available on a bilateral basis, not through the multi-year budget,” said Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.