The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, will travel to Budapest (Hungary) on Monday 27 November to meet Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has been accused of blocking a number of decisions concerning Ukraine.
The President's spokeswoman, Ecaterina Casinge, confirmed this bilateral meeting on the evening of Thursday 23 November via the social network X.
This announcement comes at a time when the Hungarian Prime Minister is accused of wanting to use his veto at the December European Summit to block European aid to Ukraine (see EUROPE 13280/4), while European funds, including €22 billion in cohesion funds, are still frozen for Hungary under the ‘rule of law conditionality mechanism’ (see EUROPE 13298/6).
On Thursday 23 November, the European Commission indicated that Hungary could receive €900 million in pre-financing from the EU, as part of the €10.4 billion recovery fund (€6.5 billion in grants and €3.9 billion in loans) for measures included in the ‘REPowerEU’ chapter, if the EU Council adopts the latter (see EUROPE 13299/28). However, the payment of most of this money has also been suspended until a number of conditions relating to the rule of law have been met.
Mr Michel will also try to convince the Hungarian Prime Minister to agree to the opening of EU accession negotiations with Ukraine (see EUROPE 13297/15).
Budapest has called for a strategic debate on relations between the EU and Kyiv, a prerequisite for the EU to agree to move forward with the country’s EU accession process, and has taken the view that Kiev has not yet met all the criteria for opening negotiations (see EUROPE 13294/36).
Hungary has also been blocking a new tranche of the €500 million ‘European Peace Facility’ for several months. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant and Pauline Denys)