European Union leaders has announced on Thursday, their intention to convince Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to join a plan to offer stable financing to Ukraine
They however stated that they are also ready to provide the cash to Kyiv without Hungary if their arguments fail.
The plan is to help cover Ukraine’s 2024-2027 needs with 33 billion euros ($36 billion) in loans and 17 billion euros in grants.
The money, they said, will be coming from the EU budget to give Kyiv more predictable funding as it fights off Russia’s invasion.
The EU has been helping Ukraine since Moscow invaded in 2022, but so far it has been through intergovernmental deals that require national approvals every year and are more costly and complex than funding through the EU budget.
Due to internal political strife in the US Congress, financial support from the United States, another major donor of aid to Ukraine, is uncertain, making the stability of the four-year financing that the EU budget would give all the more crucial.
To use the EU budget, all 27 member countries have to agree, and Hungary, which cultivates close ties with Moscow, wants to be able to veto the disbursements every year. The other 26 EU countries have rejected Hungary’s demand, and they and Hungary have been in a stand-off since December.
The summit on Thursday, called to resolve the issue, is the last opportunity to reach a deal before abandoning the EU budget as a way to fund Ukraine and return again to the more complex, costly and less predictable financing used previously.
Chioma Kalu
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