EU countries may deprive Hungary of voting rights because of Ukraine

The EU countries are considering the possibility of depriving Hungary of voting rights after attempts to prevent support for Kyiv, Report informs referring to The Guardian.

The posters are going up all over Hungary. “Let’s not allow them to decide for us,” runs the slogan alongside three classic villains of Hungarian government propaganda.

They are: Ukraine’s wartime leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy; the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen; and Manfred Weber, the German politician who leads the centre-right European People’s party in the European parliament, which counts Hungary’s most potent opposition politician among its ranks.

That decision is Ukraine’s membership of the EU, a distant prospect not in the gift of any of the politicians now plastered across billboards in Hungary. Ballot papers, being sent out this week, ask a simple question: “Do you support Ukraine becoming a member of the EU?”

Despite the neutral question, Hungary’s government is not standing on the sidelines. After the launch of the campaign, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, last week urged people to vote, claiming that Ukrainian membership would mean “we would have to spend all Hungary’s money on Ukraine”.

The government has also claimed – without offering evidence – that “cheap labour” from Ukraine would take jobs from Hungarians, while epidemics would spread because not enough Ukrainians get vaccinations.

The governing Fidesz party realised that “there is a sentiment against Hungary’s involvement in the war”, said László Andor, Hungary’s EU commissioner from 2010 to 2014. “But ever since, this has been used and abused to deny proper support to Ukraine.”

Hungary has repeatedly sought to block EU sanctions against Russia, eventually backing down. It has vetoed the release of €6bn funds to reimburse other EU countries providing military aid to Ukraine and flatly refused to sign two EU declarations in support of its invaded neighbour.

But now its attempts to stymie EU support for Ukraine could force a reckoning in its relations with the bloc at a moment when Orbán contends with his most serious political challenger in years.

EU member states are considering more seriously than ever how to use their ultimate sanction against Hungary: the removal of voting rights under the EU treaty’s article 7.

The idea remains at an early stage, but informed insiders think it will never happen because rescinding voting rights requires the unanimity of the remaining 26 members.

Under a previous government, Poland wielded the saviour veto; now Slovakia’s populist prime minister, Robert Fico, is seen as holding that card. The European parliament launched the article 7 procedure in 2018, but it has languished amid hesitancy among member states.

Now there are flickers of change. Andor said things had moved on since the Orbán government’s first “very consequential violations” against the independence of the judiciary emerged in 2010-11. “There are many more emotions [now]. Why? Because Orbán is obstructive on issues which the majority of the European Union countries consider of vital importance,” he said, referring to Ukraine.

Some think a reckoning will come if Hungary seeks to veto the extension of sanctions against Russia, a vast array of measures aimed at curtailing the war economy, including the freezing of €210bn of Russian central bank assets held in the bloc.

The profits are being used to fund Ukraine’s war effort, while the capital is seen as vital for its eventual reconstruction. But the measures need to be renewed unanimously by July 31.

“I am pretty sure that if they felt they had the backing of the US, they would block,” said one senior EU official. “It would be huge: basically, it would put them not literally but virtually outside the union.”

Diplomats have taken comfort from the fact that Hungary has always backed down on threats to veto, possibly discouraged when Donald Trump also threatened Vladimir Putin with sanctions. “If the past is predictive for the future, we should be OK. But it would be foolish to assume that,” said one senior diplomat, who added that “work is going on” to find ways around a potential veto.

Dutch Green MEP Tineke Strik, who leads the European parliament’s work on Hungary and the rule of law, said: “Member states really are getting fed up with Orbán.” She counts 19 governments “that seem to be ready to take a step in the article 7 procedure”, which includes action that falls short of suspending voting rights. But they lack “a strategy on how to get the rest of the member states on board”, she added.