In a recent speech Ursula von der Leyen named Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia as countries without whom the EU is not complete. She, on the other hand, only referred to the Western Balkans as a bloc, despite the fact that the accession of Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia should be a priority considering the EU’s security interests.
As the European Commission threatens Hungary with withholding billions of EU funds, Ursula von der Leyen’s own corruption scandal around the controversial Pfizer deal is growing. Double standards seem to be at the very core of the EU.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, announced on Monday that the EU is preparing an ’emergency intervention’ in the bloc’s power market to curb skyrocketing prices.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán declared that Hungary, backed by over two million votes in the ‘Voks 2025’ initiative, has blocked Ukraine’s EU accession. Speaking on Kossuth Radio, he also touched on migration, energy, the Pride march, and space policy.
Hungary’s Voks 2025 referendum on Ukraine’s EU accession became one of the most successful public consultations ever, with over 2.2 million votes. State Secretary Balázs Hidvéghi declared the results will shape Hungary’s stance in Brussels, opposing what he calls a ‘reckless’ EU push for Ukraine’s membership.
US President Donald Trump will not consider stricter measures against Russia, despite appeals from EU leaders and Ukraine during the NATO annual summit in The Hague. Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that such actions would signal the end of diplomatic engagement.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán clashed during the annual NATO summit in The Hague over Ukraine’s bid to join the European Union. While Zelenskyy argued that it is unfair for a single member state to block Ukraine’s EU aspirations, Orbán responded that it is equally unfair to risk dragging the Union into a direct conflict with Russia.
The European Commission’s latest country-specific recommendations have drawn strong criticism from the Center for Fundamental Rights, which claims Brussels is pushing Hungary to abandon popular domestic policies in favour of multinational and geopolitical interests.
‘My colleagues listed some…fine principles: sovereignty, diversification, energy security, solidarity. However,…if the von der Leyen-Zelenskyy plan goes into effect, Hungary will be subject to the opposite of all these. This proposal is a serious violation of our sovereignty, since the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union states that energy policy decisions are a national competence.’
As the Trump administration signals its intention to step back from peace talks over the war in Ukraine—pressuring Kyiv and Moscow to engage in direct negotiations—a new structure for peace efforts is beginning to take shape. In parallel, the Vatican under Pope Leo XIV is assuming an increasingly active role in the process, positioning Rome as the new epicentre of the negotiations.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.
