Despite a Hungarian poll in which Hungarians allegedly opposed Ukraineʼs membership in the EU, the European Commission sees no reason to block the negotiation process.
This was stated at a briefing by European Commission Speaker Guillaume Mercier.
“We take into account the results of these national consultations. The Hungarian government has appointed and organized these non-binding consultations. As you know, national consultations are a matter for the authorities of an individual country, so Hungary and the Hungarian government must explain what they plan to do with them next,” Mercier noted.
He emphasized that Ukraine is implementing the reforms necessary for EU membership and meets the criteria for opening the first cluster of negotiations on joining the bloc.
Mercier also emphasized that the European Commission positively assessed Ukraineʼs plan regarding national minorities — this topic is the main source of disputes with Hungary.
He added that there are no objective reasons to block the start of accession negotiations with Ukraine. Mercier hopes that such negotiations will begin "very soon".
What preceded
Hungary held a "national consultation" called Voks2025, a poll asking Hungarians whether they supported Ukraineʼs accession to the EU. The countryʼs authorities claim that 95% of those polled were against it, and a total of 2.284 million citizens took part in the poll.
At the same time, Voks2025 is not a referendum, but an advisory vote that has no legal force and can only be used as a political tool.
Earlier, opposition Hungarian politician Peter Magyar criticized these “national consultations” and called them a failure. Magyar said that at most 600 000 Hungarians took part in the survey, which is 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".
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