How ‘unacceptable’ Orbán defeated the EU again — but maybe for the final time

BRUSSELS — Viktor Orbán has been attending European summits for 16 years. At what may turn out to be his swan song, he faced EU leaders separating themselves into good cops and bad, hoping to persuade him to approve a €90 billion loan to Ukraine.

He saw them all off. But his victory may be short-lived.

The bloc’s longest-serving government chief, facing an election in less than a month that he’s forecast to lose, has long been a thorn in the side of Brussels (which also means Paris, Berlin and a score of other capitals). There was no sign at Thursday’s European Council that even if he is preparing to walk off into the sunset he’s any less stubborn — or any more admired.

“Nobody can blackmail the European Council, nobody can blackmail the European institutions,” European Council President António Costa, who chaired the meeting, told reporters, in an extraordinary broadside. “It is completely unacceptable what Hungary is doing.”

The Hungarian prime minister reneged on a promise he’d made at a summit in December to approve the loan. In doing so, he’s undermining the very fabric of EU decision-making, which relies on governments sticking to iron-clad commitments, leaders said.

Orbán “is violating one of the fundamental principles of our cooperation,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said shortly after the summit wrapped. His refusal to approve the Ukraine loan after formally giving his consent in December “is a serious breach of the loyalty among member states, undermines the European Union’s ability to act and damages the reputation of the EU as a whole.”

With Europe looking impotent as war in the Middle East escalates, leaders hoped they could at least get money flowing to Ukraine to help it fend off Russia — in a conflict where the EU feels it actually has some sway.

But the mood was grim. Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was beamed into the meeting by video link after for so long being a ray of light at EU gatherings, seemed to make things worse rather than better.

Harsh criticism

EU leaders divided into two groups to convince Orbán to change his mind. Most, including Costa, piled on the pressure.

“It was very, very harsh criticism and the feeling was this simply cannot go on like this,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told reporters. “I have never heard such hard-hitting criticism at an EU summit of anyone, ever.”

Costa said no leader has ever violated “this red line before.” 

There were some leaders who tried the opposite approach. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and, though less effusive, Belgium’s Bart De Wever, attempted to appeal to Orbán’s ego, speaking sympathetically about understanding his position, five diplomats and an EU official granted anonymity to speak freely told POLITICO.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to EU leaders via video during a rountable of the EU Summit in Brussels on March 19, 2026. | Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

“You have to treat him like a 6-year-old child, you have to humor him,” said one of the diplomats.

Ahead of the summit, the EU cooked up a compromise they hoped would let Orbán to save face in his election campaign yet still approve the loan. The EU was prepared to hold back from dispensing the money until oil flowed through the Druzhba pipeline, which brings Russian oil to Hungary and was damaged by a Russian drone in January, according to two EU diplomats and an EU official.

In recent weeks, the Hungarian prime minister has linked the pipeline issue to the loan and accused Ukraine of not repairing Druzhba for political reasons — making it an election issue by painting himself as the protector of his country’s interests. Zelenskyy has said he doesn’t want to repair a pipeline that the Russians have repeatedly attacked, which helps fund the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of his country. Costa said during his press conference that Russia had damaged the pipeline 23 times since launching the full-scale invasion.

“What I have done today is to crush the oil blockade, which [was] imposed on us by Zelenskyy,” Orbán said after the summit. “So I defended the interest of the country.”

After the election

Merz was among a group of leaders who hoped the Ukrainian president would use his address to the summit to reduce the temperature and reassure Orbán that he would fix the pipeline. Instead, Zelenskyy went on the offensive.

“Zelenskyy played it harder than [our] expectations,” perhaps believing “he can wait it out,” said a government official who was granted anonymity to speak freely about the closed-door talks, like others quoted in the article. If Orbán wins the election next month, “maybe [Zelenskyy’s] calculation is that he will change his tone after.”

While Ukraine desperately needs the EU’s €90 billion, Zelenskyy now has more time after the International Monetary Fund approved an $8.1 billion loan late last month. Kyiv should have enough money to stay solvent until early May, POLITICO reported.

The antipathy between Orbán and Zelenskyy runs deep, according to a senior EU diplomat, and the ill will was on full display on Thursday.

The Hungarian prime minister got up from his seat and stood behind the other leaders, looking on with contempt as Zelenskyy appeared on their screens, according to a diplomat.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky (on screen) speaks to EU leaders via video as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán watches from the distance (bottom) at the European Council summit in Brussels, March 19, 2026. | Pool photo by Geert Vanden Wijngaert/OL / AFP via Getty Images

After 90 minutes, with Zelenskyy digging in and the Hungarian not budging, the leaders decided to shut down the debate, issuing a statement that “the European Council will revert to this issue at its next meeting.”

The bet is that one way or another, things will be different after Hungarians go to the polls on April 12. If Orbán loses, then his successor could be motivated to lift Budapest’s obstruction in exchange for the EU releasing cash.

“France and Germany were not willing to spend too much time” or “political capital” to persuade Orbán at Thursday’s summit, and had “no willingness … to help his electoral campaign,” the national official said.

If Orbán is reelected — which one EU official said many of the leaders in the summit room on Thursday believe is likely — then he may be more willing to approve the loan, once oil flows through the Druzhba pipeline again.

But if he doesn’t, several punishments will be on the table at a leaders’ gathering in Cyprus on April 23-24, including freezing more funding, suing Hungary in the EU’s top court, issuing fines, and even the so-called nuclear option, Article 7, which strips countries of their EU voting rights.

Awkward silences

The atmosphere during Thursday’s discussion was “icy” at points, with “awkward silences,” Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten said.

It means the saga of the EU’s loan to Ukraine, which at one point the bloc was hoping to have resolved as long ago as a summit in October, is delayed for at least another month.

A failure of leaders’ powers of persuasion? Not quite, maybe.

“There was no way Orbán was going to say yes anyway,” one of the EU diplomats said.

Most EU leaders hope it’s his last hurrah.

Nette Nöstlinger, Nicholas Vinocur, Gerardo Fortuna, Gabriel Gavin, Hans von der Burchard, Sonja Rijnen, Zia Weise, Seb Starcevic, Giorgio Leali, Hanne Cokelaere, Ferdinand Knapp, Milena Wälde, Aude van den Hove, Gregorio Sorgi, Koen Verhelst, Victor Jack, Ben Munster, Jacopo Barigazzi and Bartosz Brzezińksi contributed reporting.