Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Thursday that he had vetoed the joint declaration regarding Ukraine because "we cannot support any joint position before Hungarians express their opinion on Ukraine's European Union membership."
"We will not go along with the creation of a common European position that Hungary is a part of if it is pro-war," PM Orbán said on Facebook in a video recorded during a break in the EU summit in Brussels. "This is not the first such battle" that Hungary has had to fight, he said.
"Hungarian families have lost around 2.5 million forints per household as a result of the war in the past three years, and I must stop that... We can't allow Hungarian families to be made to pay the economic consequences of the war," he said.
He added that the only way to achieve this was "if we convince Europe that instead of being involved in war adventures, they should simply support the peace efforts of the US president, and then there will be peace."
"This debate has been held. We could not convince each other and I vetoed the joint position," he said.
PM Orbán also said that the Ukrainian president had also participated in the debate.
"I would not say that he was acting in a friendly way. The Ukrainian president suffers from confusion about his role: he acts as if they were in the European Union already and he allows himself a sharp tone which he should not. He is making a request; he'd like to be allowed into the EU," PM Orbán said.
He added that Hungarians were currently being asked about what they thought about the EU accession of Ukraine.
"It is no use President Zelensky pressing us ... before we find out the opinion of Hungarians, I cannot support him in this matter," the prime minister concluded.