Denmark is working to break Hungary’s EU veto against Ukraine

“If we integrate Ukraine into the EU, we are closing the war in.”

So said Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, at the start of last week’s EU summit in Brussels.

This gave Orbán a foreboding start in Denmark’s attempt to open negotiation areas with Ukraine under the Danish EU presidency, which began on July 1.

But Denmark will try to find a way around Hungary’s veto.

This is stated by European Minister Marie Bjerre at a press conference at Aarhus University on Thursday.

“It is too early to say that we cannot move forward. We are still trying to lift the resistance from Hungary,” says Marie Bjerre.

She states that membership for Ukraine, Moldova, and the Western Balkan countries will help increase security for all of Europe, as the Eastern countries will then turn towards the EU instead of Russia.

The problem is that Hungary is currently equipped with a veto.

At a dramatic EU summit in December 2023, Orbán allowed, after massive pressure from the leaders of the other 26 EU countries, for the EU to begin accession negotiations with Ukraine.

This formally happened in June last year with a so-called government conference. Thus, Ukraine took an important step closer to the EU, as the EU treaty requires unanimity among all 27 EU countries when negotiations are to be opened.

But since then, the process has stalled.

This is because Orbán is exploiting a special procedure for the accession negotiations, which is not written into the EU treaty.

The procedure requires that there must also be unanimity among the 27 EU countries when specific negotiation areas are to be opened with a candidate country.

Therefore, Poland hit a wall when, as the presidency country before Denmark in the spring, it tried to move forward in the negotiations.

“I hope that Denmark can achieve what did not succeed for us: to open negotiation chapters with Ukraine,” said Poland’s Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, to Altinget at the end of the Polish EU presidency.

The Polish Foreign Minister is one of Europe’s most prominent critics of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and he was therefore deeply disappointed that it was not possible to open two chapters in the negotiations during the Polish presidency.

This has simultaneously raised doubts about Denmark’s original goal of opening all six negotiation areas with Ukraine during the Danish EU presidency. But the Danish government is not giving up:

“There is only one country that is blocking. We will put maximum pressure on Hungary and do everything politically and practically to move forward,” says Marie Bjerre.

One possibility could be to change the procedure that equips Hungary with a veto over opening specific chapters in the negotiations.

The procedure is not written into the EU treaty.

Therefore, it can be changed without the lengthy process that treaty amendments require – with the built-in risk of being rejected in referendums in some EU countries.

However, a change in the procedure may face resistance from countries like Greece, which also wants to maintain a possible veto over Turkey, which is also an EU candidate country.

Marie Bjerre will not reveal what Denmark will specifically do to get Orbán to bend, but she does not rule anything out.

Not even the so-called Article 7 procedure, which in the worst case could mean that Hungary is stripped of its voting rights in the EU.

“We will conduct yet another Article 7 hearing of Hungary during our presidency. We still see violations of the EU’s fundamental values. We do not take that lightly,” says Marie Bjerre.

The EU opened the first chapter of the Article 7 procedure against Hungary in 2018.

In practice, however, it is difficult to gather a qualified majority among the EU countries to strip Hungary of its voting rights, as some EU countries are afraid that it could create a precedent that could hit them at another time.

/ritzau/