EU moves to start accession negotiations with Ukraine, Orbán leaves room while decision made

The European Union is to open accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova, European Council President Charles Michel announced. EU leaders will declare Georgia a candidate country and open accession negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina as soon as the conditions are met. "This is a historic moment and shows the credibility and strength of the European Union," Michel said.

Several sources, including Politico, reported that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán left the room at the time of the decision but did not veto. According to a video posted on the Prime Minister's Facebook page, he walked out deliberately.

The Hungarian government's "position is clear: Ukraine is not ready for us to start negotiations with it about EU membership," Viktor Orbán said. "Opening negotiations with Ukraine under these circumstances is a completely senseless, irrational and misguided decision. But

after nearly eight hours of debate, the other 26 countries insisted that this decision should be taken and decided to "go their own way". Hungary does not want to participate in this very bad decision so it stayed away”, he said.

The main steps in a country's accession process, such as the opening of accession negotiations, are decided unanimously by the European Council. Charles Michel was therefore asked how the decision was then taken. The President of the European Council said it was important that no member state opposed the decision and that was why they were in a position to make this announcement tonight.

An EU official said that a decision had been reached by the European Council on the matter, which no member of the body opposed. According to Politico, after hours of debate, Olaf Scholz suggested that if there was no way Orbán would agree, he could leave the room so that a unanimous decision could be taken in his absence. However, according to one source, this was not a spontaneous suggestion but is something which had already been discussed in previous meetings.

Another EU source confirmed that Viktor Orbán's temporary absence was agreed in advance in a constructive fashion.

According to the European Council's website, "the agreement of all EU Member States is needed to start formal accession negotiations". An anonymous EU source, however, told Politico that everything was done according to EU regulations. "If someone is not present, they are not present. Legally, it is completely valid," they said.

Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob told Politico that Orbán didn't receive anything for not following through on his veto threat in the end. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that Orbán had argued his case very hard, but in the end decided not to veto, a decision Varadkar respects. He also referred to this being only the beginning of a process and noted that there could be many more votes later on where Orbán would be able to use a veto.