The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, announced in the early hours of this Friday in Brussels “strong support” in the European Union for the negotiations that will allow financial support to Ukraine. However, Michel acknowledges the lack of unanimity.
“26 leaders have agreed to the negotiations on all parts,” the President of the European Council announced, highlighting the lack of support from one of the national representatives, in this case Viktor Orban.
Charles Michel added that Sweden’s “usual procedure” is the need to “consult its parliament”, but the government agrees with every aspect of the discussion that was on the table.
“However, another leader failed to reach an agreement on these negotiations,” Charles Michel announced, referring to Hungary. The President of the European Council understands that “this means, however, that there is “strong support for all components of these negotiations”, which was “expressed by 26 leaders”.
“These are all priorities. And this is important: support for Ukraine, migration, solidarity, funds, defense. All this is part of this negotiating framework and means that we will return to this issue early next year and try to reach unanimity,” he said.
Charles Michel emphasized that on the first day of the meeting in Brussels, an initial agreement was reached that “surprised everyone” as the green light was given to open negotiations with Ukraine on membership of the European Union.
However, the agreement was reached without the participation of Hungary, which abstained, allowing the European Council to deliberate on the issue on which it “does not agree”, considering it “a bad decision”. “
However, the President of the European Council believes that it is rather “a very important political signal” and “a very strong political decision”, and also “very important for the credibility of the European Union”.
It now remains to conclude negotiations on the revision of the multiannual financial framework, which should provide resources to guarantee Ukraine’s financial stability, through an amount of EUR 50 billion, of which part of EUR 17 billion will be allocated to non-EU regional countries. repayable funds and the rest in the form of loans.
Charles Michel believes that there is room to reach an agreement with 27 countries to keep aid to Ukraine within the scope of the multiannual financial framework, temporarily rejecting a second option, namely concluding an alternative agreement , involving only 26 of the Member States.
“I remember the barriers we had for the original budget, about four years ago,” he recalled, emphasizing that at the time we “spent four days and four nights here in Brussels.”
‘Now, in just a few hours, we have managed to present a balanced proposal with broad political support, which shows that we are serious, that we want to be credible and that we want to do everything we can to protect our fundamental interests and to defend. to provide more stability,” he emphasized.
Source: DN
