EU Leaves Hungary Behind as It Pledges to Boost Ukraine Support

Twenty-six European Union leaders ignored Hungary to back a declaration of support for Ukraine at an emergency meeting, underscoring the difficult road ahead as the bloc tries to adopt ambitious reforms to mobilize new support for Kyiv.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the EU’s most Russia-friendly leader and long a thorn in the bloc’s side, refused on Thursday to sign onto the summit’s conclusions, which aimed to pledge unwavering support for Kyiv and set out conditions for achieving a peace settlement, according to people familiar with the matter.

The 27-member bloc is rushing to mobilize hundreds of billions of euros in new defense funds and create a new security architecture to protect against Russia as the US pares back its protective role on the continent. Orban, however, has the power to veto many of the EU’s more ambitious reforms it’s trying to push through at a break-neck pace.

“The time has come to learn how stop one person from torpedoing the whole process of decision making in the EU,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told reporters Thursday. Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said there are plans to forge a “coalition of the willing” that can sidestep internal opposition.

President Donald Trump’s increasingly antagonistic rhetoric aimed at Ukraine and the EU, and threats to water down America’s security commitment to Europe, have focused minds on the continent, which has woken up to the dire nature of the challenge it faces as well as the need to move quickly — something the bloc isn’t well equipped to do. 

After Orban refused to approve the Ukraine conclusions, the bloc is expected to move ahead with a separate statement supported by the 26 other countries, said the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss closed-door talks.

The outcome presages bigger decisions that the bloc may have to make if the Trump administration continues to withhold support from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government. It may need to devise ad hoc arrangements to provide significant new amounts of military and financial aid to avoid a potential veto from Budapest. 

But the bloc will need to tread carefully. Leaders still need Orban to agree to renew sanctions against Russia, which require votes every six months.

The EU was initially hoping to move forward on an extra €20 billion of military support for Ukraine at Thursday’s summit, but a mention of this package disappeared from the latest draft seen by Bloomberg. 

The bloc did unanimously agree to back efforts to boost defense spending more generally, including debating whether to pursue a long-term reform of the bloc’s fiscal rules. The leaders called on the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, “to explore further measures” with regard to the so-called stability and growth pact.

Germany, which has long preached fiscal conservatism, shocked EU member states on Wednesday by calling for changes that would go well beyond the short-term measures proposed by the commission. 

Earlier this week, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed mobilizing as much as €800 billion in additional national spending, including €150 billion of EU loans to member states for defense investment. But the bar was set by German chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz, who announced this week that it will amend its constitution to unlock hundreds of billions of euros for defense and infrastructure investments.

“This is a watershed moment for Europe,” von der Leyen said Thursday. “Europe faces a clear and present danger and therefore Europe has to be able to protect itself and defend itself.”

With assistance from Alberto Nardelli, Andra Timu, Donato Paolo Mancini, Jan Bratanic and Sanne Wass.

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