European Council president to cut short trip to Beijing over threat to disrupt EU summit - Politico

European Council President Charles Michel will interrupt his trip to Beijing due to the threat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban disrupting the EU summit.

Source. This was reported by Politico.

At a meeting in mid-December, EU leaders are to vote to start negotiations with Ukraine on joining the European Union.

Michel, who is traveling to China for the first offline EU-China summit since 2019, will return to Brussels on Thursday to "continue discussing the way forward with leaders," a European official told Politico.

In a letter dated December 4, which was obtained by journalists, Orban urged Michel to remove Ukraine's EU accession talks from the summit agenda.

"With all due respect, I urge you not to propose to the European Council to take a decision on these issues in December, as the obvious lack of consensus will inevitably lead to failure," Orban wrote.

The Hungarian leader strongly opposes Ukraine's accession to the EU and threatens to veto the allocation of the planned 50 billion euros in aid to Kyiv.

French President Emmanuel Macron has also invited Orban to a meeting in Paris later this week, hoping to find a compromise, another Politico source said.

Michel had already met with Orban last week in Budapest. After that, the head of the European Council emphasized the importance of "EU unity" in his statements.

Background. The day before, Orban said on Twitter that he wanted to block the issue of starting negotiations with Ukraine on joining the EU at the EU summit. According to him, the European Council should not even consider this issue.