The leaders of the European institutions went to Kyiv yesterday empty-handed, as Hungary and Slovakia blocked the final decision on the EUR 90 billion loan for Ukraine at the EU Foreign Affairs Council.

These four years of war have not only been a test of strength and courage for the Ukrainians, but a permanent stress test on the functioning of European institutions.

The resilience of European institutions

On balance, despite the hindrance of peacetime treaties to be used in wartime, the blocking manoeuvres of the Kremlin’s proxies within the EU and thecompromising irresolution of many member states – above all Italy and Spain – theEU has so far done far more than could have been expected, now by bending resistance, now by circumventing it and pushing the flexibility of European rules to the extreme limit.

There is little doubt, therefore, that Ursula Von der Leyen ‘s promise will be kept and one way or another the 90 billion will arrive in Kyiv on schedule, but one has to wonder whether it was appropriate to give Orban a victory to flaunt in Hungary ‘s ongoing election campaign for the 12 April elections.

The political risk for Europe

More than that, one has to wonder whether it has been useful to extinguish thesovereignist fire that threatens to flare up in the continent’s main countries – next year there are presidential elections in France and political elections in Spain and Italy – by granting Orban everything that has been granted to him over the past four years, each time pushing the breaking point further away.

There is no doubt that the orientation of Giorgia Meloni counted in this choice. Indeed, she is now engaged in the international campaign in support of the Putin Quisling in Budapest – a tax to be paid to the White House – and with her opposition to the change of the unanimity rule in the EU has contributed to the paralysis and not to the functioning of the European institutions.

Hungary’s increasing isolation

However, in all these years, especially after Orban lost the alliance with Poland, following Tusk‘s victory, the impression is that evenHungary ‘s most politically distant states wanted to avoid the redde rationem.

Now, in a month and a half, we will find out whether Orban will leave the European Council or will be committed to blocking it in the coming years. If so, God forbid, it is, there will be no more time to lose.

If it does not become clear that, in this Europe facing the abyss of self-dissolution, those countries that venture down the same road asHungary will find it barred and will pay the price – whatever the cost – the Orban vote and the Orban style will be encouraged everywhere, starting, as we said, with Spain and France, not to mentionItaly already in the grip of a soft, not even too disguised Orbanism.

The need for a strategic break

The only way to bring clarity is to say – today, not after the vote – that in any case as of 12 April there will be a change of register and thatHungary will no longer be able to cut theUnion, unless it pays much higher prices than the pizzo it has collected over all these years to allow theUnion to be decently European. And who knows whether this clarity will also help consolidate the advantage that the alternative coalition to the Orban coalition seems to hold in the polls.

The break with Orban is not a gamble, but prudence. TheEU needs more Ukraine and less Hungary.