Charles Michel's announcement to run for the European elections in June with the Belgian Reform Movement brings an echo of concern to Ukraine, which is not finding great results on the ground and is looking with apprehension at its partners' hesitations regarding aid to defend itself from the Russian invasion. The scenario of an election as MEP of the current president of the European Council opens up the possibility of an interim in the hands of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose country will assume the rotating presidency of the Council in July. A hypothesis that Kiev does not like, given Budapest's clear pro-Russian positions and the Hungarian government's aversion to supporting the Ukrainian struggle, especially at a European level.
“I have decided to run in the 2024 European elections,” Michel announced in an interview with the Belgian media Le Soir, La Libre and De Standaard. And “if I am elected, I will take my place” in the European Chamber in mid-July, he confirmed. Faced with this decision, EU leaders will have to quickly agree on a successor to his vacant post by July 1, when Hungary takes over the six-month rotating presidency of the Council. Otherwise, community rules provide that the task goes to the member state that holds the rotating presidency. And Prime Minister Orban «unchecked in power in the Council for the six months immediately following the 2024 European elections is a scenario that most of the other 26 EU leaders would desperately like to avoid, given the growing tensions between them and the Hungarian PM, e.g. on the issue of EU support for Ukraine”, is the analysis of Politico.
Zelensky's government is still waiting to receive a 50 billion euro package from the EU, after Budapest itself got in the way and blocked the funds. And overseas, the approval of the United States Congress is still missing for the 50 billion dollars in aid for the invaded country.
Meanwhile, the war knows no respite on the ground, and is about to cross the threshold of its third year of hostility by counting the innocent civilians killed every day by bombs. In Kherson, two people were killed and two injured in a raid on a market and residential buildings, the Ukrainian regional governor said. And Russia also knows the fear of war: the border region of Belgorod, the target of attacks attributed to Ukrainian forces for months, has evacuated the first 100 people to areas further away from the border. And in the meantime, for security reasons it has canceled the Orthodox Christmas masses, which President Putin decided to spend by inviting the families of soldiers who died in the war to his home.
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