Lithuania is urging the European Union to consider altering its voting conditions after Hungary blocked two major measures linked to Ukraine, including a €90 billion financial assistance package and a new round of sanctions against Russia.
The dispute follows Budapest’s decision to halt support for the measures over concerns about disrupted Russian oil supplies via the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline.
Hungary argues that Ukraine’s suspension of oil transit through its territory harm Hungarian and Slovak energy interests to an unreasonable degree.
Before a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó announced that Hungary would veto the EU’s twentieth sanctions package against Russia.
Szijjártó specified that Budapest will not back any such decisions until oil deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline resume. That includes the €90 billion loan that had previously been agreed in principle by all 27 EU member states.
Hungary has frequently clashed with EU partners over Ukraine-related decisions and has often threatened to block initiatives.
In exchange, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys said that Hungary is disappointing an expectation on behalf of the European Union to mark the upcoming five-year-anniversary of the war with a new sanctions package and final approval of the financial assistance.
The repeated use of veto power has reignited debate in Brussels about whether unanimous decision-making in foreign policy remains workable. Budrys argued that the EU must reassess its procedures, suggesting that qualified majority voting (QMV) should be considered for certain foreign policy decisions.
Under QMV rules, a proposal passes if at least 15 of the 27 member states support it, provided they represent at least 65% of the EU’s population. Such a system would limit the ability of a single country to stall decisions for national leverage.
Budrys also raised the possibility of invoking Article 7 of the EU treaty, which allows for the suspension of certain rights — including voting rights — of a member state found to be breaching the bloc’s fundamental values.
Article 7 proceedings can be initiated by one-third of member states, the European Commission, or the European Parliament. However, actually stripping a country of its voting rights requires near-unanimous agreement among other member states and has proven politically difficult in the past, including in earlier cases concerning Hungary.
Despite the procedural hurdles, Budrys warned that persistent paralysis could undermine the EU’s credibility on the global stage — an obvious elephant in the room.
