Magyar Clears Ukraine Talks After €16.4 billion

Péter Magyar arrived in Berlin on 2 June carrying the asset Viktor Orbán left behind: Hungary’s veto over Ukraine’s EU membership talks. Friedrich Merz received Hungary’s new prime minister with military honours and called him "a great sign of hope for our times" (ZDF). Magyar is turning Orbán’s blocking power into diplomatic currency, with Brussels paying the admission price.

The Sequence That Wasn't a Deal

Magyar says there was no bargain. "There was absolutely no link between the unfreezing of the funds and opening the first chapter of the Ukraine talks," he told Euronews on 29 May.

The order of events makes that denial hard to take at face value. On 18 May, Hungary’s foreign minister announced expert-level talks with Kyiv on minority rights for ethnic Hungarians in Zakarpattia (444.hu). On 29 May, the Commission unfroze €16.4 billion in Hungarian funds that had been blocked under Orbán over rule-of-law breaches. By 2 June, diplomatic sources were saying Hungary would not block Ukraine’s first accession negotiation cluster, the move Orbán had held up for more than two years (Eurointegration).

The arrangement gives Magyar the money, Kyiv a route forward, and Brussels proof that enlargement still has life in it. His condition, legally binding guarantees for Hungarian-language education in Transcarpathia, also gives him a defence at home against Fidesz claims that he has quietly given way on migration and anti-corruption reforms.

That matters because Magyar’s mandate is not abstractly pro-European. An ECFR survey found 73% of Hungarians expect him to bring frozen EU funds home (Népszava). He is meeting that expectation first.

Fico Without a Partner

The exposed figure now is in Bratislava. Slovak prime minister Robert Fico and Orbán had operated as a blocking pair inside the EU, coordinating veto threats on Ukraine sanctions, energy policy and accession talks. That partnership ended when Orbán lost the April election.

Slovak analysts describe Fico’s government as working from "failed assumptions" about Brussels conspiring against it, when the deeper problem is isolation of its own making (Aktuality.sk).

Fico still has his veto. EU accession requires unanimity, meaning all 27 member states must agree at every formal stage. But using that veto alone carries costs Orbán never faced. Slovakia’s own foreign minister has admitted that Budapest, rather than Bratislava, was the real blocker of accession talks (STVR). Fico has not formally threatened a solo veto, though he is tying wider Ukraine cooperation to Russian oil resuming through the Druzhba pipeline.

Magyar is also changing the regional geometry around him. He has invited Romania, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria to join an expanded Visegrád format, the Central European grouping that traditionally includes Hungary, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia, with a summit planned for 23 June (Digi24). If it happens, Fico will be looking at a regional club rebuilt around him, rather than with him.

The June Test

Magyar’s positioning will be tested at the intergovernmental conference in Luxembourg on 15–16 June. EU ambassadors must first agree a common position in COREPER, the committee where member states do the hard negotiation before ministers vote. The General Affairs Council then adopts it formally (Carnegie Endowment).

The target is the opening of Cluster 1 for both Ukraine and Moldova. That cluster covers rule of law, judicial reform and fundamental rights, the areas the EU now insists must be dealt with early in accession talks rather than left to the end.

As of 2 June, Budapest’s formal position was still open. Magyar told reporters he was "very optimistic" about concluding minority-rights talks "this week" and signalled that he was ready to meet Zelenskyy (n-tv, Euronews). But the same ECFR survey found 54% of Hungarians still oppose opening accession talks with Ukraine. Magyar may have cleared the blockage in Brussels. His voters have not yet cleared it at home.