EU Russia sanctions in limbo after Orban aide urges 'debate'

Zoltan Simon, Bloomberg News on Jan 23, 2025

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The fate of the European Union’s sanctions against Russia was thrown into limbo after a top Hungarian official called for a “debate” on the measures before an end-of-month deadline to renew them.

The election of Donald Trump in the U.S. has created a “new situation,” which means sanctions renewal shouldn’t be “automatic,” Cabinet Minister Gergely Gulyas told reporters on Thursday.

The comments echoed those of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who irked E.U. counterparts at a summit meeting last month by saying he wanted to wait until Trump’s inauguration before deciding whether to extend sanctions. The last-minute intervention raised the prospect that a normally routine decision to extend measures may be jeopardized.

The issue remains open. Gulyas declined to answer repeated questions about whether Orban would veto a renewal — or if an extraordinary E.U. summit would have to be convened on the issue.

The Hungarian premier has repeatedly called for the end of Russian sanctions. One of the E.U.’s closest Trump allies, Orban has backed the U.S. president’s ambition to end the war swiftly, asserting that the new administration was poised to cut off aid to Ukraine.

But Trump’s remarks on Wednesday, in which he threatened Russia with further tariffs and sanctions if President Vladimir Putin failed to make a “deal” to end his war on Ukraine, may complicate Orban’s position.

“I hope that the government of Hungary has read the message from the president of the United States — and then we pass the sanction,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “Then we have another package and, yes, we need to close loopholes.”

E.U. ambassadors will meet in the coming days to see if they can advance the renewal, which requires the unanimous support of the bloc’s 27 member states. Several diplomats said there is currently no backup plan for extending the sanctions should Orban continue to block them.

—With assistance from Natalia Ojewska.