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Ukraine loan blocked at EU summit: right-wing Orbán and socialist Fico unite against disbursement
EU member state leaders failed to reach an agreement on the €90 billion loan earmarked for Ukraine at their Brussels summit on Thursday. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico jointly blocked the disbursement, whilst the remaining 25 member states signed a closing declaration calling for the first instalment to be paid out by early April.
What happened at the summit?
The loan dominated the closed-door discussions at the one-day Brussels meeting. EU diplomats told Politico that roughly ninety minutes of talks yielded no result, with Orbán refusing to drop his veto. Fico aligned himself fully with the Hungarian prime minister’s position.
António Costa, President of the European Council, offered a pointed public rebuke of Orbán’s conduct, calling it “unacceptable” and a violation of the cooperative principles underpinning the EU, and noting that no other member state leader had previously crossed this red line. According to diplomats, frustration with Orbán among his peers has reached an unprecedented level — though most are reluctant to be seen openly interfering in Hungarian domestic politics ahead of the 12 April general election.
With no consensus in sight, the EU is now working towards a solution that would allow disbursement to proceed without the unanimous agreement of all member states. The closing declaration, signed by 25 countries, welcomed the decision to grant the loan and called for the first tranche to be released by early April.
Fico: Zelensky is illegitimately interfering in the Hungarian election
Fico addressed the public in a video statement after the summit. He said he had informed fellow leaders in Brussels that Slovakia had been forced to declare an oil emergency after Ukraine unilaterally suspended transit through the Druzhba pipeline.
The Slovak prime minister described Ukraine’s move as unlawful, arguing that under existing EU agreements, both Slovakia and Hungary are entitled to purchase Russian oil via the Druzhba pipeline and by sea until the end of 2027. Fico contended that by indefinitely maintaining the transit blockade, Zelensky was “illegitimately interfering in the Hungarian election campaign with the aim of ousting the current Hungarian government.”
Fico declared himself ready to take further measures against Ukraine should Kyiv continue what he described as the “deliberate economic sabotage” of Slovakia. He consequently refused to sign the closing declaration of solidarity with Ukraine — leaving him and Orbán as the only two leaders to withhold their signatures.
What’s next?
The Druzhba pipeline dispute remains unresolved
The pipeline question was also on the summit agenda. The European Commission had previously offered to send an EU monitoring mission to inspect the Druzhba pipeline, but the expert group became stranded in Kyiv after Ukrainian authorities were slow to issue the necessary authorisation. Hungary and Slovakia had also written to protest their exclusion from the mission’s work.
Simultaneously, however, talks were under way in Kyiv. Serhiy Koretsky, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Naftohaz, Ukraine’s state energy company, announced that Ukraine had presented the EU’s expert working group with a comprehensive, system-wide plan for restoring the Druzhba pipeline, and that the two sides had agreed on the direction of joint next steps. EU Deputy Ambassador Gediminas Navickas attended the Kyiv meeting.
According to Koretsky, Ukrtransnafta — the pipeline’s operator — briefed EU partners in detail on the damage caused by Russian strikes, outlined the current situation, and presented the restoration plan. The EU working group offered financial and technical assistance for the repair of the pumping station at Brody in Lviv Oblast, an offer Ukraine welcomed positively.
Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced in recent days that they had launched intensive talks with EU member states and Ukraine at all levels to restore pipeline oil deliveries to Hungary and Slovakia. Whether the EU expert group intends to visit the Brody site in person remains unclear — Koretsky did not confirm this.
Merz unable to shift Orbán
According to Politico, EU leaders — including German Chancellor Friedrich Merz — had hoped that sufficient pressure could be brought to bear on Orbán to persuade him to withdraw his veto and honour the agreement reached at the December EU summit. That hope evaporated entirely during Thursday’s talks.
The EU is now seeking a legal mechanism that would allow the 25 participating member states to proceed with disbursement to Ukraine without the involvement of Hungary and Slovakia.
Germany is currently one of the Hungarian government’s main targets in the campaign:
Government-close media increasingly portray Germany as Hungary’s new political enemy
Germany issued unprecedented open threat against Hungary, FM Szijjártó says
As we wrote yesterday, Orbán cabinet said, a classified national security report on Tisza may soon be released.
Source: Politico, MTI (Hungarian News Agency), Facebook
One could try to explain the relationship between the two politicians using the horseshoe theory, and/or one could explain it by their greed for personal enrichment and unlimited power. Below is a brief description of the horseshoe theory.
Horseshoe Theory
The political horseshoe theory is a concept in political science that states that the extreme left and the extreme right are politically closer together than the moderate forces of the center.
Instead of a linear spectrum (right — center — left), the political spectrum is represented as a horseshoe. The two ends (extremism) curve toward each other, so that they almost touch in certain methods, attitudes, and views.
Proponents of the horseshoe theory argue that both extreme left and extreme right movements tend to favor authoritarian structures, be anti-democratic, use conspiracy theories, and despise democratic institutions.
Both extremes are often directed against the liberal, parliamentary democracy of the political center, which is located at the apex of the horseshoe.
In current political discourse, the horseshoe theory is frequently cited when positions of far-right and far-left parties appear to overlap on certain issues – such as foreign policy or the rejection of institutions – which in Germany is also partly discussed as a “cross-front” tendency.
Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
From the Pulitzer-prize winning, New York Times bestselling author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them.
We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top. He controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents.
But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes, from China to Russia to Iran. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another, and propagandists share resources and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.
International condemnation and economic sanctions cannot move the autocrats. Even popular opposition movements, from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow, don’t stand a chance. The members of Autocracy, Inc, aren’t linked by a unifying ideology, like communism, but rather a common desire for power, wealth, and impunity. In this urgent treatise, which evokes George Kennan’s essay calling for “containment” of the Soviet Union, Anne Applebaum calls for the democracies to fundamentally reorient their policies to fight a new kind of threat.
https://www.anneapplebaum.com/
‘The left wing and the right wing are part of the same bird’
And, presumably, darkness is light and north is south.
The problem for kleptocracies as a whole will be that their failure is inherent in the system itself. This is no cause for celebration, however, as they will drag everyone else down with them.
Over time, the opportunities to generate fraudulent profits using the system within their own country will diminish, as economic systems become increasingly inefficient, ultimately serving only to enrich the kleptocrats. The number of countries that do not resist and can simply be absorbed, or “swallowed up,” will dwindle. This means that the opportunities for kleptocracies to enrich themselves will decrease overall.
The countries implementing a kleptocratic system will decline, partly because there is a growing awareness of the consequences for the rest of the population, and the “robbery” of others will become more costly or even impossible, while the marginal utility for kleptocracies within their own borders continues to diminish.
If they don’t fail beforehand, that will be the point at which they begin to devour each other, and that will not be a pleasant time for any of us.
From a game theory perspective, Mr. Orbán’s escalation of conflict with the EU on Ukraine ahead of national elections is a textbook costly signaling strategy. By openly defying “Brussels!”, risking funding cuts, diplomatic isolation, and reputational damage abroad, he demonstrates to Hungarian voters that his “Hungary First” stance is genuine, not performative.
The higher the visible cost of defiance, the more authentic and committed he appears to his base. This is rational behavior in a signaling game where voters need to distinguish genuine nationalists from opportunists (with our Politicians hiding in plain sight).
At the same time, Mr. Orbán is exploiting the rally-around-the-flag effect by reframing the electoral contest into an existential struggle between Hungary and an external adversary, “Brussels!”, as opposed to a domestic competition with scrutiny on the economy, corruption, and public services. The latter our Politicians would obviously rather avoid.
Creating an outside enemy potentially shifts the payoff matrix entirely. Tisza is forced into a lose-lose choice between siding with the EU and/or Ukraine (appearing unpatriotic) or at least in part echoing Mr. Orbán – validating his frame. Either way, our Politicians are working on controlling the narrative and entering the elections on their preferred battlefield.
Great analysis. Fidesz makes the EU into an external enemy when it doesn’t have to be or want to be an external enemy and all for the purpose of manipulating gullible public opinion for support. The end result inevitably, however, is self-inflicted pain for Hungarians as the EU cuts funding and isolates the country. Fidesz doesn’t care if it costs the country. It is a masochistic form of public manipulation befitting Kremlin origins.
To give an analogy Orban is like someone who shows up every Friday night at the local pub provoking fights and then seeking public sympathy after getting punched.
Isn’t it nice, to have such short memory, that you forget, that Ukrain holds Hungary in a blockade, and the EU leadership sides with an outsider to destroy Hungary?
And you call Hungary’s concerns unfounded scaremongering.
Do you even read, what you write, fellow commenters? Because it sure as hell reflects bad on you.
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Three weeks after the invasion of Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov laid his cards on the table: “This isn’t about Ukraine, it’s about the world order,” he declared on the state-controlled television channel RBC. The current crisis, he said, was a fateful, epoch-making moment. “It is part of the struggle over the form of the future world order.”
But in the end, dictatorships always fail, even if it sometimes takes a little longer.
In 1938, Joseph Stalin had his last friend executed for daring to contradict him. From then on, he lived in profound isolation, surrounded only by lackeys who told him what he wanted to hear. Under the constant stress, he suffered several strokes, likely caused by high blood pressure—which went untreated, as he had rid himself of his doctors. He was a heavy smoker, a poor sleeper, and he liked salty food and Georgian wine. Even alcohol was a tool of power for him. Anyone who visited Joseph Stalin had to drink with him and laugh at his jokes.
In this way, many dictators get caught in a vicious cycle that takes them away from reality. As authoritarian rulers, they can hardly admit mistakes. They become entangled in their own propaganda. Critical advisors are replaced by sycophants, and opposition figures and journalists are silenced. Finally, it’s the old friends who are affected. The dictator drifts into utter isolation.
This paranoia can be justified. Those who rule by force make enemies. China’s “Great Leader” Mao Zedong escaped a coup attempt allegedly planned by his deputy, Lin Biao. Saddam Hussein’s sons-in-law conspired to kill his eldest son. Living in constant fear of an assassination or coup is psychological torture for which neither luxury nor power can compensate.
The insidious thing about dictatorships is that the torment doesn’t only afflict the dictators themselves. The rulers infect the population with this. After the Second World War, the philosopher Hannah Arendt described in her book *The Origins of Totalitarianism* how totalitarian regimes plunge their populations into isolation by isolating and frightening them. They sow distrust, destroy relationships between people, and sever their connection to reality. In this way, they cement their power. They ruin cultural life and the media. They divide families and friendships. They turn their country into a vast, cold echo chamber. But the loneliest and most fearful of all is the dictator himself—incapable of trusting anyone, surrounded by sycophants, cut off from genuine human connection.
The dictatorship ruins the dictator, even the worst of all: Adolf Hitler. “He didn’t want to be the first servant of a state, but rather The Führer—an absolute master,” wrote the author Sebastian Haffner about Hitler, “and he correctly recognized that absolute rule is not possible in a functioning state, but only in a controlled chaos.” Hitler’s physical and mental decline in this self-inflicted chaos, exacerbated by his drug use, is evident in photographic and audio documents. His once powerful voice became increasingly hoarse and shaky until he could only whisper. He shuffled and walked stooped, his left arm trembling. Similar trajectories can be observed in other dictators. Mao Zedong showed symptoms of ALS, and Franco suffered from Parkinson’s disease. A striking number of dictators died after long periods of progressive decline.
Not all dictatorships are the same. There are military dictatorships, party dictatorships, and personalized dictatorships. Some dictators seek legitimacy through revolution, others through tradition. There are fascists, communists, and pragmatic, non-ideological leaders. Some hold sham elections. But their personalities are remarkably similar. “They all suffer from paranoia and narcissism, they are all very aggressive, and they like to humiliate others,” says American historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of a study of autocrats titled Strongmen. She was astonished by the consistency of these personality patterns in her research on dictators.
It would be too simplistic to dismiss dictators as pathetic lunatics. They are indeed lunatic and pathetic, but also effective. Ben-Ghiat identifies five key instruments that all dictators employ: Nationalism creates the emotional basis for extraordinary measures. Propaganda generates alternative realities. Masculinity is a symbol of strength. Corruption creates networks of loyalty.
The EU will find a way around Orban’s veto. Merz hit the nail on the head when he accused Orban of “disloyalty”. In a way perhaps it is not bad that Orban continues with the same behaviour because it will lead the EU to take action against him. Hungary needs to suffer consequences for disloyalty. We cannot have an agent of Russia acting inside the EU to continuously undermine European security. This behaviour will ulitimately lead to negative consequences for Hungary and already has.
Mertz choose the exact day, when Nazi Germany invaded Hungary, because Horthy’s refusal to take part in the Holocaust, to express, how much Germany needs to pressure Hungary into falling in line with the anti-Russian war effort.
I don’t know, if this could have worse optics, feankly.
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President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen assures that despite Hungary blocking the allocation of a 90 billion euro loan to Ukraine, these funds will be provided to our state “in one way or another”. Von der Leyen said this at a press conference following the meeting of the leaders of the EU member states and governments in Brussels, the correspondent of UNIAN reports.
The president of the European Commission noted that in December 2025 at the meeting of the European Council it was decided to grant Ukraine a loan of 90 billion euros, and then there was only “one condition”.
“The condition is that three countries will not participate in the granting of the loan. That condition has been met. So let us be clear about our position. The loan remains blocked because one leader does not keep his word. But let me repeat again what I have already said in Kiev: we will implement it one way or another,” von der Leyen stressed.
She added that there are challenges ahead, but today the EU’s resolve has been strengthened.
For his part, European Council President Antonio Costa defends a similar position, as EU leaders discussed and agreed by consensus to provide Ukraine with a 90 billion euro loan back on December 18.
“Now we need to implement it,” Costa stressed.
He reiterated von der Leyen’s words that it will be done “one way or another”.
Costa said that at the EU summit today, member state leaders “committed themselves to clearly condemn the position of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and to remind that the agreement reached is an agreement.”
“All leaders must keep their word. And no one can blackmail the European Council. Nobody can blackmail the institutions of the European Union,” Kosta emphasized.
At the same time, he welcomed Ukraine’s efforts and determination to repair the Druzhba oil pipeline, which was destroyed by Russia. In particular, Kostta said the EU welcomed the public commitment of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to restore the oil pipeline within the next six weeks. Technical and financial support has been offered from the European Commission for Ukraine to make sure that the Druzhba oil pipeline is restored. As he emphasized, it must be taken into account that it is up to Russia whether it will try to destroy the pipeline again.
“Russia has attacked the Druzhba pipeline 23 times. This is the 23rd time Ukraine will repair this pipeline again,” Kosta emphasized.
In this regard, he added that the responsibility for the future functioning of the pipeline does not depend on Ukraine or the EU with its governing bodies. Therefore, he said, Hungary’s actions are “completely unacceptable” and EU leaders cannot agree with such behavior of Budapest.
Yes, yes, yes. Germans want Hungary to fight Russia.
Do you think this is the first instsnce, or the third?
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