It turned out that Hungary also supported softer Russian sanctions at the EU summit at night
As we wrote in the morning, the second package of EU sanctions, sanctified last night, was half-hearted because Community leaders did not oppose the exclusion of SWIFT demanded by the Ukrainians and by the British and some Eastern Member States (there was no unanimous support). . therefore not put to the vote, but rather taken out of the package). It is not yet clear under what conditions this rough step would be taken.
A Financial Times summary around SWIFT’s exclusion, there was some disagreement among community leaders as to whether or not to include Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as sanctions. The paper writes that while Baltic members, for example, have been pushing hard for revenge on Putin and the Russian economy right now, “Germany, Italy, Cyprus and Hungary, among others,” have pushed the process to leave sanctions to the future. . that is, the third package should be the most serious.
Friday morning Twitter posted Donald Tusk, the former president of the European Council and former People’s Party president, who mentioned “Germany, Italy and Hungary” as a blocker of tougher sanctions, said the governments of these countries had “shamed themselves”.
Politico in his summary he wrote about itthat “Germany, Italy and Austria” argued (so Hungary was not mentioned) that the most severe sanctions would be reserved for a third round of sanctions later.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán published a short video message at the end of the EU summit, which we wrote about in this article. Among other things, he only said that the sanctions imposed do not affect the field of energy, which is why they decided that the countries neighboring Ukraine should spend more money on their security and border protection.
Cover image: European Union, European Council media outlet on the extraordinary EU summit on 24 February 2022