By Athena Papakosta

The Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbanwho had threatened to veto the seven-year budget review – which required a unanimous decision and includes a €50 billion bailout for Ukraine – finally caved in to the union’s remaining 26 leaders, making the fastest U-turn in six weeks blackmail.

As the British newspaper The Guardian points out, on Brussels under siege by the peasants, there was a sense of relief but also a sense of anger among the “27” leaders of the Union who were forced back into the Belgian capital, for the second time in two months.

The Hungarian prime minister, the only European leader who maintains close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, succumbed under pressure from the Europeans at the last minute and after a barrage of meetings with the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz as well as the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel.

As reported by international news media, citing unnamed sources, Viktor Orbán seems to have understood that the lies ended on Thursday morning shortly before the start of the Summit.

At the meeting organized by the president of the European Council, according to the same sources, the Hungarian prime minister realized that no one supported him, that he was completely isolated. Already, days before, the activation of Article 7 of the EU Treaties, which provides for the suspension of the right of a Member State to vote on Union decisions, had fallen on the table.

“No one can blackmail 26 Member States,” said the Prime Minister of Finland, Petteri Orpo.

“Europe’s support” for Ukraine “was “unanimous and not divided by a country friendly to the Kremlin”, French President Emmanuel Macron said Macron.

For his part, Viktor Orban, after the announcement of the agreement, spoke of a diplomatic victory.

Of course, the Hungarian prime minister does not seem to have received it exchangeslike last December, when the “27” were called upon to give the green light to the start of Ukraine’s accession negotiations, the provision of new military aid to Kiev for the war with Russia and the provision of new economic aid to the country of Volodymyr Zelensky.
Then the European Commission – in a last-minute maneuver to avoid a European wreck – decided to release 10 billion euros from the Cohesion Fund for Hungary.

This time, in addition to the European “blackmail” of isolation in response to Orbán’s blackmail with a veto, a strong card of the Europeans seems to have been proven and a paragraph in the text of the conclusions, which concerns the fact that the European Council will invite the European Commission in two years in order to reassess the fiscal framework, but without the possibility of a veto.

The Prime Minister of Hungary requested, after all, a review of the money on an annual basis and, as he wrote on the X platform, ex-Twitter, he received guarantees that the money that will be given to Ukraine is not from the frozen – from the European Union – piggy bank of money for Budapest.