Hungarian economy functions also without EU funds - Orbán

• Late on Thursday, the European Council decided to open accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova. Contrary to his earlier promise, the Hungarian PM did not veto the EU's joint decision. Instead he walked out of the vote. Politico said it was German Chancellor Olaf Scholz who suggested Orbán leave the meeting room so leaders could, technically, make a unanimous decision in his absence.
• At the same time, this morning Viktor Orbán posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he had not voted for the €50 billion EU aid package for Ukraine. This is not a big surprise, as it was previously known that Hungary was against the aid. “Two concessions in one summit was too much to sell back home in Hungary,” an EU official briefed on the negotiations told Politico.

Yesterday, 26 heads of state and government decided on Ukraine's accession to the EU. Orbán, checking in from Brussels for his weekly interview with public radio MR1 (Kossuth), said that there had been a long and difficult debate, eight hours of trying to convince the leaders that Ukraine was not ready to join the EU, let's revisit the issue later. "To help badly is worse than not helping at all," he said.

But they had two strong arguments, one was that there were 26 of them and I was alone,

Orbán pointed out. "The other was that they wanted to give the encouragement they needed to go to war. But it is for national parliaments, including the Hungarian Parliament, to have the final say. If we do not want Ukraine to become a member of the EU, we will vote against it," he added.

"It's a long long process, if something is going to harm Hungarian interests, we will stop the process. Hungary didn't want to be part of this bad decision, so I left the room", the PM said.

EU aid for Ukraine

They wanted to give €50 billion to Ukraine straight away, but I had to veto it,

Orbán said. Legally, this is not a veto, but it prevented the decision. Orbán said that even starting accession negotiations was a bad decision. The financial and economic consequences of this bad decision will not be tolerated, for example, if it harms the interests of Hungarian farmers, "the handbrake will be pulled".

Orbán says there is a long list of reasons why the €50 billion Ukraine package is a bad decision. When the EU set up the reconstruction fund, they took out a joint loan, but Hungary, for example, did not even have access to it. "We made an exception once, and it proved to be a bad idea," he said.

The other problem is that the situation in Ukraine is bad, the war should be stopped. Instead, they now want to give money to continue the war, Orbán explained. Ukraine's membership of the EU does not immediately harm our interests, but this other issue would be an immediate violation of our interests.

EU funds for Hungary

Better late than never,

Orbán remarked about the unblocked EU funds.

He said that the EU owes Hungary money, transfers can be delayed, but in the end the funds have to be released, "it is our money". On paper it has happened, we will see in the next one or two months what the situation is. At the next EU summit we will see what has happened, he added. The PM thinks it is an important lesson that:

The Hungarian economy works without EU funds. There is a myth that the Hungarian economy cannot survive without external help. 2023 was a difficult year, but the Hungarian economy made it through. It can function without EU money, but you don't have to flee if they throw money at you.

We need to decide how much of the resources should now be used to pay teachers' salaries, support SMEs or other purposes.

It will now be two months before they meet again for an EU summit. If the budget law is to be amended, Hungary must get what is coming to it. There is a good chance that we can enforce this,

he said.

Cover photo: MTI Photo/Press Office of the Prime Minister/Vivien Cher Benko