Reacting to the EU’s decision to grant 50 billion euros in aid to Ukraine, Balázs Orbán, the prime minister’s political director, said Brussels is gripped by war fever and its leadership is striding blindly into armed conflict.
“We Hungarians will not give up our pro-peace position, we will not send weapons or take part in the war,” Orbán said on Facebook. “We believe we will be proven right on the matter of the war, as we have been regarding migration. We know the majority of Europeans want peace,” he said. On the matter of aid for Ukraine, the political director said there had been a risk that “funds would be sent without any sort of oversight mechanism … and that Hungarians’ monies would also land in Ukraine.” Hungary successfully prevented both at the summit earlier on Thursday, he said. He said the Ukraine aid would be reviewed after one year and re-considered after two years in view of the EU’s budget for that period. Hungary will retain the resources it is entitled to, and their disbursement will be negotiated with the European Commission in a “fair procedure”, according to a European Council guarantee, he said. Balázs Orbán said European citizens would have to weigh in “if pro-war Brussels is to be stopped, so we must achieve change together” at the European parliamentary elections later this year.