PM Orbán acknowleged the heroic fight of Ukraine, but refuses to support its EU membership

Ukraine’s European Union accession has been prevented thanks to the more than 2 million votes cast in the government’s Vote 2025 public survey, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told public radio in Brussels on Friday.

Orbán compares himself to Tiananmen Square Chinese rebel

Concerning Thursday’s round of talks at the European Council summit, the prime minister said it was “against enormous headwinds” that he had announced Hungary’s decision not to approve the opening of the first accession chapter with Ukraine. The accession talks are a long process and the opening of the various chapters requires unanimous approval from member states, including Hungary, Orbán said. “The chapter in question can’t be opened without unanimity,” he added. “Work can be done in the background but there can’t be any progress on the path that ends in membership.”

Orbán said EU leaders wanted Ukraine to join the bloc as soon as possible, and were looking for a way to “push the Hungarians aside”. “They haven’t been able to do that yet, even though I was the only one standing in their way like that one Chinese rebel seen standing in front of the column of tanks in Tiananmen Square,” Orbán said. “But now there’s 2.2 million of us standing in their way saying that there’s no way forward here.”

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He said that Hungarians, at the same time, appreciated Ukraine’s “extremely difficult situation and their heroic struggle” and understood that “they need help”, but “we want to help them without destroying ourselves in the process.” The EU would be destroyed if Ukraine became a member, he said, adding that cooperation and partnership were possibilities, but membership itself would mean giving Ukrainians the same rights as Hungarians, including jobs in Hungary and EU farm and cohesion subsidies.

Orbán: Noone can say what Ukraine is

Orbán said Ukraine was a country at war, even if through no fault of its own since it had been “obviously attacked”, and allowing the country into the bloc would be to involve the EU in a war with Russia. EU leaders discussing Ukraine’s fast-tracked accession was, he said “a direct threat”. To integrate a country into the EU, the position of its borders, population size, and the suitability of its legal system and economy must be assessed, yet Ukraine today is “an undefined entity”, he said. “No one can say what Ukraine is,” he argued.

Orbán said a prerequisite of former Soviet bloc countries such as Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Romania becoming EU members was first joining NATO, which guaranteed their military security and the location of their borders. But in Ukraine’s case, “this isn’t possible”, he said. Admitting Ukraine to NATO would mean entering a third world war the next day, he added. By jumping over NATO and allowing Ukraine to join the EU sooner, “the war won’t be brought to NATO but into the European Union”, he said.

“This is madness,” he said. “We must talk about this honestly and seriously.” Orbán said it was “terrible news for Ukraine” that they would neither be admitted to NATO nor to the EU, adding that “a country that fights every day and sheds blood” for its own future could not be convinced of this. Unlike at the EU summit, sentiment on the issue of Ukraine joining NATO at the alliance’s summit was “a simpler story”, he said, adding that initial talk of “all sorts of nonsense” had moved on, and participants had started to “talk seriously”.

Ukraine and the NATO

“Do you seriously think that Ukraine should be in NATO? Forget about it,” he said. “Our position is now the majority one in NATO; this is now the NATO position.” Referring to European People’s Party head Manfred Weber and his comment that he was “fed up with” Orban, the prime minister said Weber was “so fed up” that they promptly “threw together a party called the Tisza Party” with the goal of installing it in Hungary. Brussels, he added, was not interested in “reaching an agreement with us” but in ensuring there was a government in Budapest “that always votes the way Brussels wants it to”.

Orbán said this was why he had taken the argument to “the bosses of the Hungarian opposition”. “I must argue with the bosses of the Tisza Party and DK here in Brussels; I must represent Hungarian interests against them.” Meanwhile, he said the plan to ban the import of Russian energy was not on the agenda in Brussels this time, but “the fight” would continue next week at a meeting of EU foreign ministers. Hungary and Slovakia, he said, rejected the EU’s demand to wean themselves off Russian oil and gas because it would lead to families having to pay twice as much for electricity and 3.5 times more for gas.