“No single member state has stymied the European Union’s ability to express a common foreign, defence, energy and migration policy as much as Hungary.”

“Orban agreed to a 90-billion-euro loan for Ukraine last December after being promised that Hungary, along with Slovakia and the Czech Republic wouldn’t have to back it. But he abruptly reversed himself last month – an unheard-of manoeuvre in European politics – because Ukraine refused to mend the Druzhba pipeline carrying Russian oil to Hungary after Russia accidentally bombed it.”

“Orban agreed to a 90-billion-euro loan for Ukraine last December after being promised that Hungary, along with Slovakia and the Czech Republic wouldn’t have to back it.”

“The EU missed an opportunity for a structural evolution when French and Dutch referenda defeated a constitution in 2005 that would have replaced unanimity with qualified majority voting.”

“In 2010, when Greece became the first member of the eurozone to go bankrupt, endangering the common currency’s survival, other EU members extended a series of bilateral loans, called the Greek Loan Facility, because the EU then lacked a common fund for distressed eurozone members.”

“The EU has floated the idea of circumventing Orban’s veto by releasing a set of 26 bilateral loans to Ukraine from the other members.”

“Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently told Le Monde that if [Ukraine loan funds] are not released, the Ukrainian army will be underfunded.”