European Council president Charles Michel had hoped that today’s EU summit would be able to announce both a strong endorsement of the Commission’s sixth round of Russia sanctions and €9 billion for rebuilding postwar Ukraine.
Neither will be clear-cut, with the latter involving a row over how much of the cash should be in loans or grants. Hungary appeared set to veto the sanctions, particularly the phase-out of Russian oil, complaining of insufficient compensation for its dependence on Russian supplies.
Even discussing the sanctions at the summit without pre-agreement would be counterproductive, prime minister Viktor Orban has written to fellow leaders. Negotiations were continuing to the wire on various compromises supposedly acceptable to Budapest: delaying its requirement to apply sanctions or exempting oil that is transported via pipelines, for example.
But the Hungarian subtext, which has infuriated fellow member states, is its demand for money to adapt refineries and the freeing up of post-pandemic recovery funds, which Brussels has withheld because of corruption concerns.
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Taoiseach Micheál Martin at Davos last week suggested, with Ukraine clearly in mind, that Ireland could back an EU treaty change to introduce majority voting on approving new EU members. The summit will barely touch on the issue, hearing a technical report on the state of play, but there are clear signs that several states are likely to oppose Kyiv’s accession and there is opposition to any fast-track approach. Unanimous decision-making does not seem to be the major challenge, although it is a serious impediment to other key decisions.
While many voting areas no longer require consensus, the treaty preserves this intergovernmental feature of the union, most notably in foreign policy and security policy, taxation, the budget, accession and treaty change. Ireland was a beneficiary over the years in defending “vital national interests” like neutrality and its corporate tax regime, so the Taoiseach’s signal of a more community-based, majoritarian approach marks a significant shift in State thinking.
But the willingness of states like Hungary and Poland to use the reserved areas of consensus voting to take quite separate issues hostage may cause more than one fellow member state to rethink support for unanimity. Orban’s threat to block even discussion of the sanctions today will serve to remind many of the nature of this semi-detached member.
As Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked pointedly last week: “Of course, I am grateful to our friends who are promoting new sanctions. But where did those who block the sixth package get so much power? Why are they still allowed to have so much power, including in intra-European procedures?” Indeed.