There is now no trace of reason left in Brussels, "some very heavy stuff happened today," Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said during a break from Thursday's meeting of EU foreign ministers. According to him, several participants said that the EU is not ready for peace. He did not specify who he was referring to, but he concluded that "Brussels and a significant number of member states want to go to war." While Donald Trump is making enormous efforts for peace, the biggest obstacle to this is "Brussels, the European Union itself," he said of the EU, which makes decisions on foreign affairs unanimously. He concluded that “the decision has therefore been made in Brussels, the European Union is choosing war over peace.”
In the wake of Trump's trade war and his later retracted threats concerning Greenland, Szijjártó considered it outrageous that some people viewed the US as a challenge. "Another thing that was openly and shamelessly done today was that, along with some other geopolitical actors, they accused the United States of seeking to divide us," he said indignantly, even thought the United States’ new national security strategy mentions, among others, that Hungary is one of the countries that “should be pulled away from the EU”. He considered it naive that, given the role of the EU, the US “would have to seek division.”
Szijjártó said that it is "treated as a fait accompli" that Ukraine "must be given" €1.5 billion under the prosperity plan. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade was referring to the document presented to the heads of state and government at the last EU summit.
According to Politico, the document detailed a $800 billion plan, with a significant portion of the money coming from private sources, the US, and international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Based on the article, it seems certain that the EU's share would be at least €100 billion, which would come from the budget starting in 2028 (this is already included in the draft budget announced last summer, which has not yet been adopted) , thus enabling development worth more than €200 billion. According to the Hungarian government, there was a footnote referring to $700 billion, but this was not mentioned in the article.
However, according to Szijjártó, they want even more money than that. Based on what he said, this would include allowing the European Investment Bank to spend money on "arming Ukraine" (there was previously talk of amending the bank's charter so that it could also provide loans for EU military industry developments) and putting more money into the fund that supports the Ukrainian energy system. The minister did not specify the amounts involved, only that they were “in the hundreds of millions and billions of euros.”
Szijjártó spoke of a Brussels-Kyiv tandem, even though according to a Politico article, the $800 billion plan from the EU would be part of a 20-point plan with which the US is trying to broker peace. The minister later stated: “We fully support the peace negotiations.”
He repeatedly stated that he would not agree to the EU's training mission in Ukraine. He also described Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha's video announcement congratulating the ministers on the EU member states' decision (with Hungary and Slovakia voting against) to phase out Russian natural gas a few days ago as "outrageous".
Szijjártó informed his colleagues that Sybiha had "crossed all boundaries" when he previously compared Viktor Orbán's behavior to that of Ferenc Szálasi, (Hungary’s far-right leader during the Nazi occupation) who was allied with Adolf Hitler.
The Foreign Minister also announced that negotiations on the Hungarian government's €17.4 billion defense loan plan were already in their final stages and added that governments are being pressured to give some of the money to Ukraine (in reality, they have the option to do so, but on a voluntary basis).
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