The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, has convened a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels, effectively boycotting a competing gathering in Budapest, to express widespread discontent with Hungary’s independent diplomatic actions.
Borrell announced that he would hold informal meetings of EU foreign affairs and defense ministers in Brussels after the summer break, thus preventing the same participants from meeting in Budapest as originally planned.
At Monday’s foreign ministers’ meeting, “EU member states overwhelmingly criticized Hungary’s lack of sincere and loyal cooperation,” Borrell wrote on X, explaining the decision.
Since taking over the EU’s rotating presidency on July 1, Hungary has angered other EU leaders. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s “peace missions” to Moscow and Beijing, along with talks with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, have caused particular frustration
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EU member states are expected to act as neutral representatives of the EU’s position during their six-month tenure chairing the bloc’s council of ministers, a role that does not grant formal representation of the union on the world stage. Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, remarked, “Many voices objected to the portrayal of Hungary speaking in Beijing, Moscow, or to Donald Trump on behalf of the EU.”
Sikorski added that the presidency is meant to be “the spokesman of the agreed EU position” rather than representing national interests. “If everyone behaved that way, the union would never have been established and probably wouldn’t survive.”
