Hungarian government to launch public opinion poll on Ukraine's EU accession

"The decision on Ukraine's EU membership shouldn't be made without consulting the people. We are launching an opinion poll in Hungary on Ukraine's EU membership!" – Viktor Orbán announced on Facebook early in the morning on Friday, after the extraordinary EU summit on Thursday, where the leaders of member states discussed Ukraine and the defence of Europe.

Here, due to Viktor Orbán's objection, all conclusions on Ukraine were issued on behalf of only 26 of the 27 member states, without Hungary. Orbán had suggested last week that no conclusions on Ukraine should be adopted at all, so as not to show disunity, and said that the previously issued documents were "irrelevant".

"Hungary has remained on the side of peace, we argued that the war should not be continued, but that all possible strength and energy should be put towards supporting the president of the United States of America so that his peace negotiations would be successful," Orbán said after the decision, adding that the other 26 member states had adopted a document "which is about continuing the war, and about the need to strengthen Ukraine so that it can keep fighting, which Hungary, of course, did not support".

According to Orbán, huge amounts of money would have to be sent to Ukraine in the coming period, and this, combined with the cost of Ukraine's accession to the European Union, would amount to a sum that the EU economy, and that of Hungary, could not bear. "

He said that the question of Ukraine's membership of the European Union should be revisited in earnest, because he would not want a decision to be taken without asking the people, so

“We will initiate an opinion poll on Ukraine's EU membership.”

He said the vote would be conducted by the Hungarian government in the same way as national consultations are done: “quickly and in a straightforward fashion, and then we'll see". When answering a question, he said that “We need to know how far people are willing to go to make sacrifices in order to continue supporting Ukraine,” stressing that it would not be a referendum but an opinion poll. A subsequent reply he gave later revealed that the opinion poll would in fact be another national consultation.

Balázs Orbán, the Prime Minister's Political Director, posted a similar statement on Facebook. According to him, Hungary's goal is not more war, but peace as soon as possible, and to achieve this, Europe should support the new pro-peace approach of America. "Brussels has now been left alone in supporting Ukraine's position in the war. And the money that the European Union wants to send to the war in Ukraine, the money that it wants to spend on sustaining the Ukrainian state, and the burden of Ukraine's EU membership would be too much for the European Union's economy, including Hungary's." He said that in a situation such as this, the Hungarian government does not want to make decisions without the Hungarian people's consent, which is why they are launching an opinion poll on the subject.