MOSCOW, June 4 Austrian authorities supported Belgium’s proposal to deprive Hungary voting rights within the EU for refusing to provide assistance to Kyiv, a representative of the Austrian Foreign Ministry said.
Earlier, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belgium, which chairs the EU, Aja Labib, said that the European Union should consider such a possibility.
«We expect all 27 EU members to fully adhere to the principles on which the European Union was founded… This is especially true for the future EU Presidency. With this in mind, we support strict continued adherence to the Article 7 procedure in relation to Hungary,» he said Politico newspaper.
According to Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union, if a country "regularly and seriously violates the principles" EU, it may be temporarily deprived of voting rights.
Hungary will replace Belgium as interim president of the EU Council on July 1. Her powers in this capacity will last 6 months — until the end of 2024.
Earlier, the media reported that a number of EU countries, “as punishment” for Hungary for its resistance to providing assistance to Kyiv, plan to prevent its representatives from holding high ministerial positions in the European Commission. In the current composition of the EC, Hungarian representative Olivier Várhelyi holds the post of Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement Issues.
The European Parliament previously adopted a resolution on the situation with respect to the principle of the supremacy of EU laws in Hungary, in which it challenged Hungary’s right to chair the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2024 due to an alleged violation of this principle and non-compliance with European values .
As Bloomberg reported, Hungary is blocking the EU countries from reaching an agreement that would allow the start of negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the bloc, and Politico, citing officials, reported that EU countries fear that Hungary may block the use of income received from frozen assets of the Russian Federation, which should be directed to support Ukraine through the European Peace Fund (EPF).