EU Foreign Ministers to Meet in Brussels, Not Budapest, Over Ukraine Diplomacy Spat

In a rebuke of Hungary’s controversial solo diplomatic efforts on Ukraine, the EU’s informal meeting of foreign and defence ministers will take place in Brussels instead of Budapest, the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said on Monday (22 July).

“We have to send a signal, even if this is a symbolic signal,” Borrell told reporters after Monday’s foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, announcing the change of venue.

Hungary’s repeated uncoordinated steps to speak against EU unity must “have some formal consequences,” Borrell said.

“But I refuse the word boycotting, the meeting will take place and Hungary will be there,” he added.

Pressure to take such a step has been building after EU countries rebuked Hungary and its Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for his self-declared “peace missions” to Ukraine, Russia, China, and Florida. Budapest never explicitly explained whether they had been conducted in the national or EU presidency capacity.

Hungary chairs the rotating EU Council presidency until 31 December.

The step came after several EU member states said they would downgrade their participation in informal meetings planned in Budapest during Hungary’s EU presidency.

The European Commission asked its Commissioners last week not to attend informal ministerial meetings during the Hungarian six-month EU stint in protest at Orbán’s diplomatic solo efforts over Ukraine.

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The EU’s informal foreign and defence ministerial on 28-30 August was the only one left, as it is the bloc’s only ministerial configuration that is called not by the rotating EU presidency, but by the EU’s chief diplomat.

According to several EU diplomats, 13 member states wanted the meeting to take place in Budapest, five said they would not attend and eight left it up to Borrell to decide.

Some had even floated the idea of Borrell potentially calling the meeting symbolically in Kyiv, instead of Budapest. However, its backers remained in the minority.

But given that 25 EU countries – minus Slovakia and Hungary itself – supported the condemnation of Orbán’s initiative, Borrell decided to go ahead with the decision, he said.

“We fully support Hungary and the initiative for peace,” Slovakia’s Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok told reporters heading into a separate, informal EU home affairs ministers meeting on Monday in Budapest.

Hungary over the past weeks had accused the EU of having a “pro-war policy” by maintaining military and financial support for Ukraine.

“It is Putin, who is the war party, the only one which provokes is Putin, who is calling for Ukraine’s partition and rendition as preconditions for any talks and any ceasefire,” Borrell said after the meeting.

According to several EU diplomats, the majority of the bloc’s member states had voiced their anger towards Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó inside the meeting room during Monday’s talks.

“What a fantastic response they have come up with,”  Szijjártó said after the meeting. “I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but it feels like being in a kindergarten.”

Hungary was bound by Article 24.3 of the EU treaties, according to which all members must support the bloc’s foreign policy “actively and unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity,” Borrell said after the meeting.

The article in question, which had already been cited by some member states earlier, was neither “decoration” nor “empty words”, he added.

“Each member state is sovereign on its foreign policy – true. But as far as they are members of this club, they have to obey the treaties,” Borrell said.

Asked if Orbán’s actions would amount to a legal breach, Borrell said: “For me, it’s clear what has happened belongs to the realm of a lack of loyal cooperation.”