Hungary sues EU to block Ukraine aid from frozen Russian assets
Photo: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (Getty Images)
The Hungarian government is attempting to challenge in court the European Union's decision to use income from frozen Russian assets to finance aid to Ukraine. The decision was made without consulting Budapest, Portfolio reports.
The pro-Russian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's government filed a lawsuit back in July. The lawsuit demands that the EU Council's decision, adopted in May 2024, be overturned. This decision allowed military aid to Ukraine to be financed by taxing the profits from frozen Russian assets.
Hungary is blocking the approval of payments from the European Peace Fund totaling more than €6 billion. However, Hungary abstained from voting when the decision on payments from the assets was made. This gave the EU grounds to declare that the decision had been made and that Hungary's position was irrelevant.
For its part, the Orbán government is demanding that the decision taken in March 2025 by the European Peace Fund's steering committee be declared invalid, when, in accordance with the EU Council's decision, the use of profits from Russian assets for Ukraine's needs was agreed upon.
This very document of the steering committee stipulates that Hungary's vote should not be taken into account when deciding on the allocation of individual funds to Ukraine. However, Budapest claims that the procedure allegedly violates the basic principles of lawful decision-making set out in the EU's founding treaties.
However, the prospects for Hungary's lawsuit are currently unclear. First, proceedings in the EU Court of Justice could take years. Moreover, the procedure for using income from EU assets has already been changed. Some of this money is transferred to Ukraine for non-military purposes, so it is not entirely clear what the court would have to cancel in the event of a positive decision.
Since the beginning of 2025, the European Union has transferred €10.1 billion to Ukraine as part of the G7 Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration for Ukraine (ERA) initiative.
ERA provides for the allocation of $50 billion to Ukraine by the G7 countries, of which the EU's contribution is €18.1 billion ($20 billion). The funding is provided from frozen Russian assets — more precisely, from the income from Russian funds frozen in European banks.
In July, Ukraine's state budget received €1 billion from the European Union under this program. The previous tranche of the same amount was received in June.
