Hungary has not changed its position on Ukraineʼs accession to the EU and will block the opening of negotiations

Hungary will not agree to Ukraine and the European Union opening the first cluster of negotiations on the countryʼs accession to the bloc.

This was stated by Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó after an informal meeting of EU ministers in Copenhagen, Index.hu reports.

According to him, the Hungarian authorities will not allow "Ukraine to be pushed into the EU", because this "will destroy Hungarian farmers, Hungarian food security, and allow the Ukrainian mafia to penetrate Hungary".

"That is why we will not allow the substantive part of the accession negotiations, that is, the specific chapters of the negotiations, to be opened," Szijjarto said.

According to him, the Hungarian government is under great pressure regarding the accelerated accession of Ukraine to the EU and the introduction of new sanctions against Russia, this time in the energy sector.

Szijjártó said that Hungary will not succumb to pressure and will “protect the Hungarian people from the negative consequences of war and sanctions”. He explained that in addition to blocking Ukraine’s accession to the EU, there are three more points.

According to him, Hungary will provide "all possible support" to the US President Donald Trumpʼs peace efforts, because "only an agreement between the US and Russia can lead to a settlement" [of the war].

Szijjártó also emphasized that Budapest will not allow the money of the Hungarian people to be used to arm and finance the Ukrainian army — which is why the country continues to block the use of approximately 2.5 billion forints of European taxpayers from the European Peace Fund.

And Szijjártóʼs final point was that his country would not allow Brussels and Kyiv to jointly risk Hungaryʼs energy security.

“We will not allow the cost of utilities in Hungary to increase, so we will not support proposals for sanctions against energy companies that are important for Hungaryʼs energy supply,” he concluded.

Hungaryʼs position on Ukraineʼs membership in the EU

Hungary has been blocking Kyiv’s efforts to join the EU. For example, in April 2025, the government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán urged Hungarians to vote against Ukraine’s EU membership in a national poll.

The results of that vote were released on June 26, with Hungarian authorities claiming that 95% of Hungarians were against Ukraine’s EU membership.

Earlier, opposition Hungarian politician Peter Magyar criticized the “national consultations” organized by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s team and called them a failure.

Magyar said that at most 600 000 Hungarians took part in the survey, the lowest figure in the history of national consultations. And “tens of billions of forints” were spent on it.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine reacted to the Hungarian national consultations on Ukraineʼs accession to the EU and stated that "the real goal of this anti-Ukrainian hysteria is to shift the attention of Hungarian society from the failures of the governmentʼs socio-economic policy to an imaginary external enemy".

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski admitted that due to the Hungarian veto during his countryʼs presidency of the EU, it was not possible to open a single negotiation chapter with Ukraine.

The media reported that the US President Donald Trump, at the request of European leaders, called Hungarian Prime Minister Orban and asked him not to block Ukraineʼs entry into the EU. The next day, the Hungarian Prime Minister wrote that he had heard the request for EU membership, but did not plan to back down.

• LRT.lt reported that this month Lithuania sent a letter to European Union countries proposing that at an informal ministerial meeting in Copenhagen on September 1-2, negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova begin without the consent of Hungary, which is blocking Ukraineʼs entry into the EU.
• The European Union has 27 countries, and if all but Hungary agree to Lithuaniaʼs proposal, negotiations on Ukraineʼs entry into the bloc will proceed technically, and they can be formally consolidated later, when Budapest changes its position or government.
• However, the publication noted that the European Commission is skeptical about the idea of starting technical negotiations without the consent of all members of the bloc. Its representatives remind that the opening of each chapter requires unanimity.

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