Hungary is satisfied with the decision of the European Union (EU) to allocate €50 billion to Ukraine. This was stated on February 4 by the head of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, Peter Szijjártó.
“We are happy with this. If you, as a member of the EU, are not receiving the funds that are due to you, then you have suspicions that one of the partners on the outside may receive financial support due to this. But we received guarantees that this will not happen,” he told the TV channel. VRT.
Another condition was the creation of a mechanism to control the expenditure of funds, and on this issue the European Union also agreed with Hungary.
“It was very important for us that a mechanism for reviewing the decision was created, so that every year we could see how the money allocated to Ukraine was spent. Now the European Commission will annually prepare a report, on the basis of which the European Council will make recommendations,” Szijjarto noted.
On February 1, Politico reported that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban changed his mind about vetoing European Union (EU) aid to Ukraine after communicating with Italian Prime Minister Giorgi Meloni and French President Emmanuel Macron.
As Orban himself stated, his decision was influenced by the fact that the EU gave guarantees that frozen funds from Hungary would not be allocated to Ukraine. According to him, the EU summit came up with a decision according to which Ukraine’s funding will be strictly controlled. This was one of Hungary’s conditions, Orbán indicated.
All 27 leaders of EU member states at a summit in Brussels on February 1 agreed to allocate an additional €50 billion as part of a support package for Ukraine from the union budget.
Back on January 29, the Financial Times suggested that the EU could sabotage the Hungarian economy if it continues to obstruct the release of aid to Kyiv. It was noted that the levers of pressure would be the exchange rate of the Hungarian forint and the level of investment attractiveness of the country.
Hungary, at a meeting in Brussels on Ukraine, which took place on December 14–15, blocked the allocation of €50 billion to Kiev. In the same month, Orban proposed that the EU refrain from aid to Ukraine for the next five years, noting that the €50 billion that the union is collecting transfer to Kyiv, simply no.
Western countries have increased military and financial support for Ukraine against the backdrop of Russia’s special operation to protect Donbass, which began on February 24, 2022 due to the aggravation of the situation in the region as a result of Ukrainian shelling. At the same time, recently there have been increasingly frequent statements in the West about the need to reduce support for Kyiv.
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