Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union | |
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Council of the European Union | |
Term length | 1 July –31 December 2024 |
Website | hungary24.eu |
Presidency trio | |
The 2024 Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union is the third in a trio of rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union positions currently held by Hungary. Hungary's Presidency of the Council in 2024 is the final nation in the twelfth trio of Council Presidencies together with Spain and Belgium, which began on 1 July 2023 and will last until the end of 2024. It is Hungary's second Presidency of the council, after its first in 2011.
Hungary succeeded Belgium as president on 1 July 2024. The next presidency will be held by Poland starting on 1 January 2025. [1]
The Hungarian Presidency stated on its presidency website that it will focus on the following priorities: [2]
The Rubik's Cube, a famous Hungarian invention, is used in the presidency's logo as a symbol of ingenuity, creativity and strategic thinking. [3]
The presidency used the motto "Make Europe Great Again", which has been criticised for its resemblance to the upcoming U.S. president Donald Trump's campaign slogan "Make America Great Again". [4]
On July 2, Viktor Orbán visited Kyiv and asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to consider a ceasefire for the Russo-Ukrainian War, encouraging setting a deadline prior to the next Kyiv peace summit in order to accelerate peace talks. [5]
On July 5, Viktor Orbán made an unannounced visit to Russia and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to discuss possible ceasefire proposals prior to creating peace terms. [6] The meeting was strongly condemned by several European politicians, especially due to Putin referring to Orbán as "a representative of the European Council" rather than just as a representative to Hungary. Vice-President of the European Commission Josep Borrell responded by saying that Viktor Orbán "does not represent the EU in any way". President of the European Council Charles Michel said that "Russia is the aggressor, Ukraine is the victim, the rotating EU presidency has no mandate to engage in dialogue with Russia on behalf of the EU". NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated that "Viktor Orbán does not represent NATO at these meetings, he represents his own country". [7] The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly condemned Orbán's visit to Moscow for not coordinating or seeking permission for the visit with Ukraine beforehand. [8]
Following his meeting with Putin, Orbán flew to Beijing on 8 July to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, describing the trip as "Peace Mission 3.0" in a statement on Twitter. [9]
Following the meetings, Germany, Poland, the Baltic states and other member states threatened to boycott EU meetings chaired by Hungary. The European Parliament delayed Orbán's speech to open the Hungarian presidency to as late as September, which parliament officials claimed was to "focus on nominees for the European Commission". [10]
On 15 July 2024, the European Commission announced that several top European Union officials, including European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, would boycott informal meetings held by Hungary as a result of the visits at the "start of the Hungarian (EU) presidency". [11]
Klovićevi dvori Gallery in Zagreb and Hungarian National Museum in Budapest organised joint exhibition "Ideal and reality: first golden age of Hungarian painting and commencements of the Croatian Modern art" with exhibits of 19-century Croatian and Hungarian paintings. [12]
Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance is a right-wing populist and national-conservative political party in Hungary led by Viktor Orbán. It has increasingly identified as illiberal.
The European People's Party (EPP) is a European political party with Christian democratic, liberal-conservative, and conservative member parties. A transnational organisation, it is composed of other political parties. Founded by primarily Christian-democratic parties in 1976, it has since broadened its membership to include liberal-conservative parties and parties with other centre-right political perspectives. On 31 May 2022, the party elected as its President Manfred Weber, who was also EPP's Spitzenkandidat in 2019.
Viktor Mihály Orbán is a Hungarian lawyer and politician who has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010, previously holding the office from 1998 to 2002, and the leader of the Fidesz political party since 2003, and previously from 1993 to 2000. He was re-elected as prime minister in 2014, 2018, and 2022. On 29 November 2020, he became the country's longest-serving prime minister.
Viktor Volodymyrovych Medvedchuk, also known as Viktor Vladimirovich Medvedchuk, is a former Ukrainian lawyer, business oligarch, and politician who has lived in exile in Russia since September 2022 after being handed over to Russia in a prisoner exchange. Medvedchuk is a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politician and a personal friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Klovićevi Dvori Gallery is an art gallery in Zagreb, Croatia. Opened in 1982, the gallery is named after the 16th century Croatian-born artist Juraj Julije Klović, considered to be one of the greatest manuscript illuminators of the Italian Renaissance.
Hungary–Russia relations are the bilateral foreign relations between the two countries, Hungary and Russia. Hungary has an embassy in Moscow and two consulate-generals. Russia has an embassy in Budapest and a consulate-general in Debrecen. Both countries are full members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
Relations between Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) started in 1991 following Ukraine's independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Ukraine-NATO ties gradually strengthened during the 1990s and 2000s, and Ukraine aimed to eventually join the alliance. Although co-operating with NATO, Ukraine remained a neutral country. After it was attacked by Russia in 2014, Ukraine has increasingly sought NATO membership.
The modern bilateral relationship between Hungary and Ukraine formally began in the early 1990s, after the end of communism in Hungary in 1989 and Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, the relationship has been marred by controversy over the rights of the Hungarian minority in the western Ukrainian region of Zakarpattia, where 150,000 ethnic Hungarians reside. Hungary and Ukraine have embassies in Kyiv and Budapest, respectively, as well as consulates in regions with large minority populations.
The Minsk agreements were a series of international agreements which sought to end the Donbas war fought between armed Russian separatist groups and Armed Forces of Ukraine, with Russian regular forces playing a central part. After a defeat at Ilovaisk at the end of August 2014, Russia forced Ukraine to sign the first Minsk Protocol, or the Minsk I. It was drafted by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, consisting of Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), with mediation by the leaders of France and Germany in the so-called Normandy Format. After extensive talks in Minsk, Belarus, the agreement was signed on 5 September 2014 by representatives of the Trilateral Contact Group and, without recognition of their status, by the then-leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). This agreement followed multiple previous attempts to stop the fighting in the region and aimed to implement an immediate ceasefire.
The Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine is a group of representatives from Ukraine, the Russian Federation, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe that was formed as means to facilitate a diplomatic resolution to the war in the Donbas region of Ukraine. There are several subgroups.
Events from 2021 in the European Union.
There have been several rounds of peace talks to halt the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022–present) and end the Russo-Ukrainian War (2014–present). The first meeting was held four days after the start of the invasion, on 28 February 2022, in Belarus. It concluded without result. A second and third round of talks took place on 3 and 7 March 2022 on the Belarus–Ukraine border. A fourth and fifth round of talks were held on 10 and 14 March in Antalya, Turkey.
France held the presidency of the Council of the European Union during the first half of 2022. The presidency was the first of three presidencies making up a presidency trio, followed by the presidency of the Czech Republic and that of Sweden.
This is a list of events that have taken or will take place in Europe in 2024.
Events in the year 2024 in Hungary.
The 2024 Washington summit was the 33rd summit of the heads of state and government of the thirty-two members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), their partner countries and the European Union (EU), which took place in Washington, D.C., United States, on 9–11 July 2024. The summit commemorates the landmark 75th anniversary of NATO, which was founded on 4 April 1949 with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, DC. The summit was also the fourth NATO summit to be held in the United States following the 1978 Washington summit, 1999 Washington summit and 2012 Chicago summit. It also marks the first summit since Sweden acceded to NATO and the last for Jens Stoltenberg as Secretary General.
The Fifth European Political Community Summit was a meeting of the European Political Community held on 7 November 2024 in Hungary.
In July 2024, Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán announced undergoing several uncoordinated meetings that he referred to as "peace missions", visiting President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv before traveling to Moscow to meet with President of Russia Vladimir Putin, followed with him visiting Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping, then traveling to the United States to attend the 2024 Washington summit and to meet Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. The meetings notably took place amidst heightened tensions and ongoing conflict in Ukraine following Russia's invasion in 2022, with China increasing diplomatic ties to Russia in the midst of economic sanctions by the European Union and the United States.
The Lukoil oil transit dispute is an ongoing international relations dispute between Ukraine and the European Union at odds with Hungary and Slovakia regarding the allowance of the pipeline transfer of Russian oil through Ukrainian territory. The diplomatic standoff arose when Ukraine imposed sanctions on Lukoil — Russia's largest private oil firm — effectively halting oil supplies to Hungary and Slovakia via the Druzhba pipeline, which the latter two nations stated would lead to an energy crisis and economic collapse. In response, Hungary and Slovakia complained to the European Commission while threatening to halt military aid shipments, energy, and diesel supplies to Ukraine.
Hungary's reactions to the Russian invasion of Ukraine have been incongruous with the attitudes of NATO and European Union member states since the beginning of the war. Hungary, a member of the European Union and NATO, was one of the few European states that did not provide military aid and completely excluded aid sent by other countries. The Hungarian government received widespread criticism for its attitude to the war, both at home and abroad: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán condemned the war, but in many of his statements he tried to blame the target of the invasion Ukraine, the Western countries and their organizations, and his political opposition instead of Russia for the prolongation of the war and its economic consequences.