The EU’s most senior diplomat, Josep Borrell, has called a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels – in effect a boycott of a rival gathering in Budapest – to register widespread anger over Hungary’s rogue diplomacy.
Borrell announced that he had decided to convene informal meetings of EU foreign affairs and defence ministers in Brussels after the summer break, meaning the same participants will not gather in Budapest as originally planned.
At Monday’s foreign ministers’ meeting “EU member states overwhelmingly criticised Hungary’s lack of sincere and loyal cooperation”, Borrell wrote on X, as he announced the decision.
Hungary, which took over the EU’s rotating presidency on 1 July, has infuriated other EU leaders, with prime minister Viktor Orbán’s self-styled “peace missions” to Moscow and Beijing and talks with the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
EU member states are meant to act as honest brokers representing the EU’s position during their six-month stint chairing the bloc’s council of ministers, which confers no formal role to represent the union on the world stage. Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, said: “Many voices objected to portraying as if Hungary was speaking in Beijing, Moscow or to Donald Trump on behalf of the EU.”
The presidency, Sikorski went on, was meant to be “the spokesman of the agreed EU position” rather than representing its national interest. “If everybody else behaved that way the union would never have been concluded and probably wouldn’t survive.”
Hungary, he said, was “in a minority of one” by rejecting a compromise proposal to hold the meeting in Ukraine. This refusal fuelled other member states’ trepidation about what Budapest might do next.
Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, described the rival meeting as “childish”, according to a social media post by the government’s chief spokesperson, Zoltán Kovács. Hungary was willing to host the meeting, but also to attend if it was held in Brussels, Szijjártó was reported as saying.
“Péter Szijjártó stated that Hungary faced aggressive war-mongering hysteria over its peace mission at the EU foreign affairs council meeting in Brussels,” Kovács said.
While routine EU meetings take place in Brussels or Luxembourg, every EU presidency organises informal ministerial meetings in its home country, which diplomats said are useful to have more wide-ranging conversations with no fixed legislative agenda. The informal meetings of foreign and defence ministers were due to have taken place in late August.
Host nations get a chance to show off their countries, set the agenda and highlight issues they care about.
The decision by Borrell, who is also a vice-president of the European Commission, came after the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said last week that no EU commissioners would travel to Hungary for informal meetings, as a response to Orbán’s freelance diplomacy.
Anger with the Hungarian government deepened after Orbán wrote to the European Council last week claiming that the EU was pursuing a “pro-war policy” with its support for Ukraine.
Borrell said all member states “with one single exception” were “very much critical” about Hungary’s behaviour. Slovakia – led by Orbán’s regional ally Robert Fico – again held back from criticising Hungary, after its silence at a meeting of senior diplomats last week.
Rejecting Hungary’s talking points, Borrell contrasted the EU stance with the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. “It is Putin who is the war party, the only one who is pro-war is Putin who is calling for Ukraine’s partition and rendition as pre-conditions for any talks and any ceasefire. And he sends reminders every day in the forms of thousands of missiles, drones and glide bombs and more military offensives.”