The EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, proposed the allocation to the bloc’s decision-making Council early this year. To be approved, it must receive unanimous support from all of the EU’s 27 member states.
A diplomatic source in Brussels told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service last month that all of them except Hungary have backed Kallas’s proposal. Budapest continued to veto the decision during a meeting of the EU foreign ministers held in Luxembourg on April 14, according to the source.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto essentially confirmed that when he spoke during an international conference in Yerevan on Tuesday.
“Our request was that the European Union provide equal support to Azerbaijan,” the Armenpress news agency quoted him as saying. “Last time, it worked: 10 million euros was allocated to Armenia and 10 million euros to Azerbaijan. This time, it can work too.”
Szijjarto referred to the other EU member states’ acceptance of his country’s condition for the release of first-ever EU military aid to Armenia. The money approved last July was due to be spent over the next two-and-a-half years on creating a field hospital and auxiliary facilities for a battalion-size Armenian army unit. The Hungarian government gave the green light for that aid in return for an EU pledge to finance demining activities in Azerbaijan.
Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban maintains a warm rapport with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, has openly supported Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Hungarian Foreign Ministry reaffirmed that support three days after the outbreak of the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war in Karabakh. In September 2023, Budapest reportedly vetoed a statement by the EU member states condemning the Azerbaijani military offensive that displaced Nagorno-Karabakh’s entire population and restored Baku’s control over the region.
Armenia’s former leadership froze diplomatic relations with the central European nation in 2012 after Orban’s government repatriated an Azerbaijani army officer who hacked to death a sleeping Armenian colleague in Budapest in 2004. The current Armenian government decided to restore the diplomatic ties in 2022 even though Hungary never apologized for the officer’s release and continued to support Azerbaijan.
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan met with Szijjarto earlier on Tuesday. The two men discussed ways of “deepening partnership” between their countries, according to the Armenian Foreign Ministry’s readout of the talks.