Polish foreign minister asks opposition to persuade Hungary to stop blocking Ukraine’s EU accession

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, says Hungary is blocking efforts to move forward with Ukraine’s planned accession to the European Union. He called on the conservative Polish opposition, which enjoys close relations with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, to persuade their ally to drop his opposition.

Sikorski also called on US President Donald Trump to ensure, during his discussions with Vladimir Putin about a peace deal with Ukraine, that he persuades the Russian leader to drop his “absurd demands”.

Speaking on Monday after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Sikorski said that Poland, as the country currently holding the EU’s six-month rotating presidency, feels “particular responsibility” for making progress on Kyiv’s path to accession, which is “an anchor of Ukrainian morale”.

“But I have to state with regret that this is another matter in which the decision is being blocked by our old friend, once an ally, the Republic of Hungary,” added the Polish foreign minister, quoted by broadcaster TVN.

“I must ritually appeal to the Polish opposition, which maintains close ideological contacts with the government and party of Viktor Orbán, to ask them to do something good for Poland, for Europe – namely to convince their ideological brethren to unblock these issues,” he continued.

The national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), which ruled Poland from 2015 to 2023 and is now the largest opposition party, has long enjoyed close relations with Orbán, though those were strained by their differing approaches to Ukraine and Russia.

Hungary has been the EU member state with the closest ties to Russia and with the toughest position towards Ukraine, including scepticism regarding its proposed membership of the EU.

Last week, Orbán set out a list of 12 demands his country has for Brussels. The last of them was: “A Union, but without Ukraine.”

In his remarks on Monday, Sikorski also referred to ongoing US-led efforts to negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. He noted that Trump had once promised to bring the war to an end within 24 hours of taking office. But “we knew it wouldn’t be that easy”, said Sikorski.

He added that Poland wishes Trump luck in his efforts and expressed hope that the US president can persuade Vladimir Putin to give up “some of the absurd demands” the Russian leader has been making regarding the proposed peace deal.

“We are clear about who wants peace and who wants war,” said Sikorski, quoted by the Polish Press Agency (PAP). “Russia will want to take over all of Ukraine by other means and, ideally, neutralise half of Europe militarily. It will not succeed, which does not mean that Putin will not try.”

“We will measure the success of Trump’s talks by the quality of the negotiated peace,” he concluded.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Konrad Laskowski/MSZ (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.