As bne IntelliNews reported, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban claimed this week that 95% of Hungarians are against Ukraine’s accession to the EU.

The Ukraine’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs shot back that Hungary’s people don’t have the right to have an opinion on Ukraine’s accession. Now the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has answered saying: yes they do.  

Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in a post on social media on June 27: “The MFA of Ukraine said yesterday that the Hungarian people have no right to decide whether they support Ukraine’s accession to the EU. Well, the MFA of Ukraine is wrong.

“Dear Ukrainian colleagues, it’s not you, not [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy] and not the Ukrainian government who decides on EU membership. That decision belongs to us, the citizens of the EU, Hungarians included,” he added.

Orban has vowed to “do everything” in his power to prevent Ukraine from joining the European Union, and is supported by Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. Both countries remain highly dependent on Russia for energy imports, from which they are also making a lot of money by reexporting the surpluses to the rest of the EU, in effect ignoring sanctions on Russian exports of oil and gas to the EU.

Other countries such as Poland are lukewarm on Ukraine’s accession. While Warsaw is a staunch supporter of Ukraine’s military effort to face down Russia’s invading forces, it is worried about giving Ukraine’s vast agricultural sector access to EU markets.

As bne IntelliNews reported, Ukraine cannot join the EU unless the Common Agricultural Policy is reformed, as under current rules Kyiv would be entitled to €186bn of subsidies and countries like Poland would go from being net beneficiaries of the EU budget to net contributors.

Cheap Ukrainian grain exports have already wrecked the Polish grain market once in 2023.

The duty-free exemptions on Ukrainian agricultural imports to the EU were allowed to expire on June 5, which will cost Kyiv billions of euros in lost revenue this year.

The EU is due to discuss Ukraine’s accession at a meeting of foreign ministers this week and EU foreign policy chief and former Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas is trying to find a way around Budapest’s de facto veto. She has said that she has a Plan B, which may involve trying to strip Hungary of its voting rights.

“It’s time for you to understand: without the will of the Hungarian people, Ukraine’s accession will simply not happen,” said Szijjártó in his post, as Budapest digs its heels in. “We do not want to be part of an integration process with a country that threatens us with war, puts our energy security at risk and has nearly destroyed our farmers once.”