The European Commission may revise the rules for joining the EU

The European Commission is considering changing the rules for joining the European Union amid Hungaryʼs blocking of Ukraineʼs entry into the bloc.

This was reported by the spokesman for the European Commission Guillaume Mercier, a correspondent for Suspilne reports.

According to him, when a country meets the membership criteria but does not move forward without objective reasons, then "trust in the entire enlargement process is under threat".

Mercier explained that if there is "more emphasis on qualified majority" when making decisions on EU accession, the EU enlargement process itself could be changed. This was stated in last yearʼs European Commission report, which was based on the conclusions of the European Council and a call to accelerate accession.

He noted that the possibility of giving the EU Council the right to make decisions by majority vote may only apply to certain intermediate stages of enlargement.

At the same time, the conclusion of the negotiation chapter must continue to be made unanimously by all member states of the European Union, as must the actual decision on accession.

"We have started discussions and stated that we can consider this issue, but, I repeat, the final decision is the prerogative of the member states," said a European Commission spokesman.

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 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.

• 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 cluster with Ukraine.
• Denmark, which currently holds the EU Council presidency, is calling for increased pressure on Hungary for violating the fundamental principles of the European Union. Minister for European Affairs Marie Bjerre said that Copenhagen would seek to activate the procedure under Article 7 of the EU Treaty — also known as the “nuclear option” because it allows for restricting the rights of a member state, including depriving it of its vote in the EU Council.

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