Hungary-EU blowup overshadows key meeting on Ukraine

A spat between the EU’s foreign policy chief and Hungary unfurled at a meeting of EU foreign ministers Thursday, diverting attention from key issues such as the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
On his arrival at the EU Council building in Brussels, EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell called for restrictions to be lifted on Ukraine’s use of donated weapons to hit targets in Russia.
“The weaponry that we are providing to Ukraine has to have full use, and the restrictions have to be lifted in order for the Ukrainians to be able to target the places [from] where Russia is bombing them. Otherwise, the weaponry is useless,” Borrell said.
The morning meeting of EU ministers was also attended by Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. An official familiar with the talks told POLITICO that Kuleba had informed his counterparts that “all signs point” to Russia continuing with its recent missile onslaught against Ukraine. The Ukraine diplomatic chief, the official related, urged the EU ministers to allow Ukraine to target installations in Russia, while saying the proposal should not be considered an escalation.
Kuleba’s appeal, and Borrell’s earlier advocacy of giving Kyiv a free hand in using its Western-donated armaments, was supported in the meeting by France, Sweden, Latvia, the Netherlands and Poland, the official said, with several noting that international law did not forbid a country from entering the territory of an aggressor in order to defend itself.
In the “no” camp, Slovakia, led by the Moscow-friendly government of Robert Fico, lamented that the meeting hadn’t been held in Budapest.
Borrell also said he had proposed that EU countries impose sanctions on some Israeli ministers for “unacceptable hate messages” against Palestinians that he claimed were against international law.
“I think the European Union should have no taboos to use our toolbox in order to make humanitarian law [be] respected. But it is not my decision. I only have the capacity of proposing; member states will decide,” he said.
Neither proposal was received well by Hungary.
“The fury of the high representative must be stopped,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in a post on Facebook, describing Borrell’s proposals on Ukraine and the Middle East as “reckless.”
“We do not want more weapons in Ukraine, we do not want more deaths, we do not want an escalation of the war, we do not want an expansion of the crisis in the Middle East. Today, we continue to stand for common sense and peace,” he wrote.
In the closed-door meeting, moreover, Hungary was criticized by Lithuania and Germany for expanding its lax “national card” immigration program to include Russians and Belarusians, which critics have panned as a security threat. Szijjártó defended the program, arguing that many more Russians live in Germany or the Baltics than in Hungary, which is home to a mere 0.7 percent of Russians in the EU.
“Szijjártó wants to simplify the problem [by] talking plain numbers,” an EU diplomat told POLITICO.
Relations between Hungary and the EU have long been rocky, but took a dramatic turn for the worse after Budapest assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of EU in July. A number of EU foreign affairs ministers boycotted a proposed meeting in Budapest, choosing to hold their own foreign affairs summit in Brussels instead.
Asked by a journalist why the meeting was held in Brussels instead of Budapest, Borrell responded: “Because I decided so.”
“I thought it was much more appropriate to do that in Brussels because some of the positions expressed by the Hungarian government go directly against the Common Foreign [and Security] Policy. It was much better to do that at home,” he added.