No veto: EU Peace Facility top-up adopted with Hungarian constructive abstention – UPDATE🔄
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EU foreign affairs ministers agreed on Monday to top up the European Peace Facility with 5 billion euros in connection with funding for Ukraine, a decision made with Hungary’s constructive abstention, Péter Szijjártó, the foreign minister, said on the sidelines of a meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council.
EU Peace Facility
EU member states can abstain from voting on a particular action without blocking it.
The minister said “the price” of Hungary’s agreement not to block the top-up was a change in the rules to exempt Hungary from involvement in financing arms deliveries.
“This means that we have to pay our share of 50 million euros, but we can determine the purpose of its use,” he stated.
He added that several important goals could be discussed in light of this, such as strengthening the stability of the Sahel region to combat migration and support the Western Balkans.
Szijjártó lamented that EU leaders “did not grasp that the EU’s Ukraine strategy has failed.” The cause of that reluctance could be that such recognition could raise the issue of taking responsibility for the damages Europe has incurred.
Referring to statements made earlier in the week concerning the possibility of deploying European troops to Ukraine, Szijjártó appealed to Western European politicians to refrain from such statements, calling them “extremely dangerous and fear-mongering.”
Anthony Blinken
Noting that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken also joined part of the meeting via video call, Szijjártó said he had reminded his colleagues of an earlier NATO decision that “everything must be done to avoid direct confrontation with Russia”.
“Western and Eastern European statements that don’t exclude deploying troops … are in clear violation of that joint NATO decision,”
he said, adding that no member had initiated a review of that decision.
He said,
“I expressed my hope to the US secretary of state that NATO will never send troops” to Ukraine.
It is actually good to see some constructive moves from our Politicians. I sincerely hope they manage to keep this up.
What crap from Szijjarto crying about Hungary “constantly facing the tragic consequences of war.” Ukraine faces the tragic consequences of war not Hungary. What Hungary faces is a minor inconvenience. The headline trumpeting “no veto” speaks volumes about Hungary’s malicious Kremlin directed behaviour towards Ukraine, the EU and NATO for the past two years.