EU leaders are wearily preparing for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to repeat his tactics from the last European Council meeting two weeks ago and try to block any support for Ukraine again, Politico reports, UNN writes.
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According to a senior EU official, who was granted anonymity to discuss closed-door negotiations, other leaders are ready to repeat their own strategy of issuing statements on behalf of the group - with the exception of the Hungarian populist.
"After March 6, no one was left in doubt that there are disagreements with one member state," the official said.
"The goal should always be to have conclusions [agreed] by 27 [member states] - if that's not possible, if the strategic split persists, and we have every indication that it will, we will move forward with 26".
At the same time, the publication notes that the special EU summit, which took place two weeks ago, was designed to address critical issues of defense and support for Ukraine, leaving today's talks open to focus on the bloc's most pressing internal issues: namely, the budget and the rescue of struggling industries.
But US President Donald Trump's plans to "end the war on his terms" are "looming over this meeting more than the organizers would like".
"It's a bit of a strange summit," said one senior EU diplomat, who was allowed to remain anonymous to speak candidly.
"Everyone knows that we need to have this conversation about the economy, about competitiveness, about the MFF (EU multiannual budget - ed.) and so on. But now the situation in Ukraine has changed so quickly that they are finding that they need to talk about it, perhaps more than they expected when they were finalizing the agenda a week ago. So it's like having to balance between these two completely different priorities," the diplomat said.