Hungarian PM threatened with disenfranchisement for refusing to vote on Ukraine

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been threatened with being stripped of his voting rights in the EU if he refuses to support financial assistance to Ukraine, Azernews reports.

According to the Corriere della Sera newspaper, the issue of a unanimous decision was not so much about the aid itself as about the danger of setting a precedent for a split in the EU.

As a result,Prime Minister Viktor Orban did not want to be the EU's white crow. As the publication notes, an important role in the negotiations was given to Italian Prime Minister Giorghe Meloni, with whom Orban has similar positions on many issues, but the "capitulation" of the Hungarian prime minister, who gave his consent to the transfer of funds to Ukraine after blocking it since December, was the result of a collective process and threats of punishment.

As noted, European leaders and the EU leadership threatened to invoke Article 7 (paragraph 2) of the EU Charter, which implies disenfranchisement (and thus veto), i.e. de facto removal from decision-making.