Frankly, I don’t see why sending funds requires unanimous EU approval. Hungary wasn’t even contributing, based on the article:
Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic approved the idea with the crucial caveat that they did not have to contribute to the loan.
So I’d expect that any group of countries that do want to send funds could do so absent Hungary without even affecting the total commitment.
Sanctions on goods out of Russia or something, sure. The EU controls what gets into the EU at the customs border. You have to have an EU-level decision, or goods can enter via another EU member and then there’s no control of the flow of goods internal to the EU. The EU structure doesn’t permit for that to be done below the EU level.
But I don’t believe that there’s any intrinsic reason that Hungary need sign off on funds going to Ukraine, assuming that other countries honestly do want to send that money. A country can send funds wherever it wants, on an individual or collective basis.
Of course any country can send whatever help they want.
The point of this agreement within EU, is that it is an EU decision that guarantees Ukraine enough money to sustain the war.
If each country does it individually, it can be blocked similarly within each country’s parliament.
And no single country would realistically guarantee Ukraine this kind of money.
Frankly, I don’t see why sending funds requires unanimous EU approval. Hungary wasn’t even contributing, based on the article:
So I’d expect that any group of countries that do want to send funds could do so absent Hungary without even affecting the total commitment.
Sanctions on goods out of Russia or something, sure. The EU controls what gets into the EU at the customs border. You have to have an EU-level decision, or goods can enter via another EU member and then there’s no control of the flow of goods internal to the EU. The EU structure doesn’t permit for that to be done below the EU level.
But I don’t believe that there’s any intrinsic reason that Hungary need sign off on funds going to Ukraine, assuming that other countries honestly do want to send that money. A country can send funds wherever it wants, on an individual or collective basis.
Of course any country can send whatever help they want.
The point of this agreement within EU, is that it is an EU decision that guarantees Ukraine enough money to sustain the war.
If each country does it individually, it can be blocked similarly within each country’s parliament.
And no single country would realistically guarantee Ukraine this kind of money.