Orbán: Brussels must immediately withdraw its ‘pro-Ukrainian’ draft budget

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Facebook on Wednesday that Brussels must immediately withdraw its “pro-Ukrainian” draft budget.

In a video, PM Orbán said the cabinet had heard briefings from Agriculture Minister István Nagy and EU Affairs Minister János Bóka at its meeting earlier today.

“We discussed Brussels’s proposal,” the prime minister said. “This is a seven-year draft budget, and the picture that’s unfolding is graver than we imagined.”

He noted that Hungarian farmers staged a demonstration against Brussels’s plans in front of the European Council’s representation in Budapest on Wednesday.

“Brussels’s proposal can be summed up as a pro-Ukrainian budget whose aim is crystal clear: they want to take Europeans’ money [and give it] to Ukraine,” PM Orbán said.

He said the plan was “weak even as a basis for negotiations”, adding that Hungary recommended that the EC withdraw the draft budget and prepare a new one “which serves the interests of the European people and European farmers rather than those of [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky and Ukraine”.

“Brussels must be stopped,” PM Orbán declared.