Fissure in EU, new pressure on Hungary’s Orban over his outreach to Russia

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, right, reads a document as he arrives for a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the European Council building in Brussels, on July 22, 2024.

There is a deep rift simmering within European Union over support to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

Hungary won’t be allowed to host a strategic EU meeting next month because of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s self-proclaimed “peace mission” trips to Moscow and Beijing this month aimed at brokering an end to the war in Ukraine, which EU partners overwhelmingly saw as undermining their support for Kyiv.

“We have to send a signal, even if it is a symbolic signal,” EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said Monday in Brussels, explaining why he had decided that the upcoming foreign and defence ministers’ meeting would take place in Brussels instead of Budapest.

Hungary currently holds the rotating EU presidency, and as such had expected to host the annual late August gathering known as the Gymnich in late August. This gathering should now be held in the EU capital in September, Borrell announced.

Orban is seen as having the warmest relationship with Russia in the EU and is largely politically isolated in his stance on the Ukraine war. His government has held up sanctions on Moscow and huge tranches of military aid for Kyiv agreed by all other partners.

Before the decision was announced, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that the idea of moving the August meeting from Budapest to Brussels was a case of “fantastic revenge.” Szijjarto slammed what he called a “concerted, hysterical, often mocking series of attacks” on Orban’s recent surprise meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jingping.

Only Slovakia’s deputy foreign minister had vocally offered support to Hungary’s “peace mission,” he noted. Speaking ahead of Borrell’s announcement, Szijjarto nonetheless signalled that he would still attend if the meeting were to be relocated to Brussels.

Borrell said Monday that while condemnation of Hungary’s recent behavior was widespread, the other EU member states had been divided between those who wanted to attend in Budapest and those who did not. Ultimately he said it was within his power to decide.

The nationalist Orban startled his EU counterparts with the appearance that he was speaking for the 27-member bloc during his meetings with Putin and Xi. Orban said he was seeking the quickest path to peace in Ukraine and portrayed himself as uniquely positioned to communicate with both warring parties.

Other EU leaders insisted that Orban was not representing them at the meetings, and in response, some EU nations as well as the European Commission said their top officials would boycott informal EU meetings hosted by Hungary and send civil servants instead.

Hungary took over the six-month rotating role July 1, and since then Orban has visited Ukraine, Russia, Azerbaijan, China, and the United States on a world tour as a “peace mission” aimed at brokering an end to Ukraine conflict. Orban’s critics accuse him of acting against the unity and interests of the EU and NATO, of which Hungary is a member, and of pursuing an appeasement strategy toward Russia in its conflict with Ukraine.