In Brussels, Hungary combined its own EU funding and Ukraine’s 18 billion aid package.
The meeting of the finance ministers of the EU countries ended on Tuesday in a situation where the money of both Hungary and Ukraine was left hanging on a loose hanger.
The multibillion-dollar decisions concerning both countries were moved further into the future, to an unknown moment.
An agreement on Ukraine’s 18 billion euro loan package should be reached quickly, but this decision was blocked by Hungary on Tuesday. The reason is that the finance ministers also have the decision to freeze Hungary’s EU money at the same time.
Read more: A historic presentation from the EU Commission: Hungary’s aid billions are now really threatening to slip through the fingers
The Treasury minister Annika Saarikko (central) characterized the situation as awkward after the meeting.
– We are committed to assisting Ukraine and these aid decisions are very urgent, he said.
The member states should reach a unanimous agreement on Ukraine’s aid decision, but not on the freezing of Hungary’s EU funding. However, the possible freezing of Hungary’s funding would also have to be decided by December 19.
Expectations were met, unfortunately
The expectations of the meeting were fully met, because the most important decisions were not made. You could predict the end result in advance.
– When we couldn’t find an agreement on the way in which Hungary could get funding for these stimulus package plans or cohesion funding, there was no possibility to make a decision about assisting Ukraine either, Saarikko summed up the end result.
Before the meeting, there was no consensus among the member states on whether Hungary’s funding should be frozen as proposed based on the so-called conditionality mechanism. The conditionality mechanism monitors the state of the rule of law.
Some of the countries wanted the EU Commission to make a new assessment of Hungary, because it has said that it has made reforms to improve the rule of law even after the expiry of the relevant deadline.
It was also known that Hungary can play with the help of Ukraine.
Saarikko believes that the leaders of the Union’s member states can try to untie the knot at next week’s summit. Another option is an extra meeting of finance ministers still in December.
Other member countries can also try to get help for Ukraine by guaranteeing the loans themselves.