It is reported that Hungary, which had announced that it would single-handedly block the EU's aid policies to Ukraine, did something controversial in December last year. At that time, the European Union was going to make a final decision on Ukraine's candidacy, and at the Brussels summit, the European Council decided to open accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova. When it came to voting, Hungarian Prime Minister Orban, who had repeatedly stated that he would resolutely oppose granting Ukraine access, suddenly left the venue early to "abstain" during the vote, and his departure allowed Ukraine to get 26 "unanimous consent" votes, and finally successfully obtained the threshold of EU candidates.
Afterwards, despite the fact that Hungary explained that they were still against it in the end, and because Hungary did not want to participate in such a "wrong decision", they left the table and condemned the EU for voting in absentia to pass the resolution; But some countries, such as Russia, are still unhappy that Hungary's actions and promises are not in line – they did not vote against it, as they say. Recently, the European Union voted again to decide on aid to Ukraine, and Hungary will be the rotating country in the second half of this year, and he was also very opposed to aid Ukraine before. Orban softened his stance last month, saying that Hungary could accept aid to Ukraine, but only in four instalments of loans and direct aid, and that it would have to be approved by the European Union once a year. The EU ignored Hungary's proposal, and the meeting finally went ahead as scheduled.
However, at the summit on the 1st, Hungary once again gave up its veto power and allowed the Ukraine aid bill to pass smoothly. According to the report, at the last minute before the start of the summit that day, Orban and key EU figures such as von der Leyen, Scholz, Macron and Meloni reached an agreement, the latter did not adopt any of his proposals and "updated versions", but according to the previous plan of 50 billion euros in aid to Ukraine. After Orban finally stated that he was "satisfied with the control mechanism for ensuring the rational use of funds", there was no obstruction, so the plan was finally adopted as expected by the European Union, and Ukraine was very excited to learn the news.
As for the reason why Orban finally changed his position, the outside world has different opinions. The Financial Times believes that several major EU powers have recently taken turns to put pressure on Hungary, which can be said to be a combination of hard and soft means to warn the Hungarian prime minister of the consequences of not doing so. With these powers already in control of other countries, Orban, who is isolated within the EU, can only agree in order to avoid becoming an "enemy of allies". But there are also people familiar with the matter who said that they believe that Orban has gained political benefits from it, just like last time they did not give up blocking Ukraine from entering the candidate country for no reason, but in fact it was the European Union that promised to allocate more than 10 billion euros in bailouts for Hungary (which was previously frozen), and they gave in.
It is also worth mentioning that earlier this week it was also reported that the European Union** decided that if Hungary still did not agree to the bailout, they would take concrete measures to "wreak havoc" on the country's economy, causing it financial problems or inflation, so Orban must carefully consider their position. There is a comment on this: "Hungary's defection may be more due to helplessness, but it also shows the fact that the EU is no longer a so-called economic win-win organization, and has become a tool for a certain country to manipulate member states like NATO, but one of the two is by military means and the other is by economic means." ”