Hungary Lifts Veto, EU Ambassadors Clear €90 bn Lifeline for Ukraine

Pipeline politics has long tied Central Europe’s energy security to Moscow—from the 4,000-km Druzhba line opened in 1964 to the 2006 and 2009 gas cut-offs that Moscow used as leverage. Today’s episode echoes those crises yet flips the script: Brussels is dangling €90 bn in collective debt, a move reminiscent of the EU’s pandemic Recovery Fund (2020) and even the 1948-52 Marshall Plan, to keep an ally afloat while still allowing Russian crude to transit. The quick shift after Orbán’s electoral defeat shows how single-member vetoes can paralyse—or unblock—EU foreign policy, a structural weakness dating to the 1992 Maastricht unanimity rules. Over a 100-year horizon this moment matters less for the cash amount than for two trends it crystallises: the EU’s creeping mutualisation of debt for security purposes and the gradual decoupling—though not yet severance—of Europe from Russian hydrocarbons. Whether this loan proves a bridge to a post-Russian-energy order or another stop-gap in a recurring cycle of energy-for-concessions will be judged by historians long after the oil in Druzhba runs dry.