Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar has said Ukraine is not ready to join the European Union, taking a position close to that of the man he replaced in May.
Magyar told a government press conference on September 3, 2026 that Ukraine was a country at war and that EU and national leaders were wrong to encourage it, according to the Hungarian news portal Index.
He said Hungary would accept only a merit-based accession process, with no exceptional and no accelerated procedure.
Viktor Orbán spent the campaign for the April 12 election casting his rival as Kyiv’s man in Budapest, telling supporters at a march in March that the vote would decide whether he or Volodymyr Zelensky formed the next Hungarian Government.
Orbán had earlier accused Magyar of striking a pact with Kyiv to install a pro-western administration, and said Hungary would not allow Ukraine into the bloc within 100 years.
Magyar’s version is narrower. He has said Hungary would back membership if Kyiv closed every accession chapter over 10 to 15 years and Hungarians approved the result in a binding referendum.
His remarks came two days after Hungary refused to approve the screening results for Ukraine’s second and third negotiating clusters at a meeting of the Council of the European Union’s enlargement working party on September 1, 2026.
It was the third time Budapest has halted the process since the summer. Cluster two covers the internal market and cluster three competitiveness, and unanimity among all 27 member states is needed to open them.
Hungary said it would drop its objection if Kyiv showed progress on the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia, western Ukraine.
Magyar said the two countries had agreed deadlines for restoring the linguistic, educational and cultural rights of the roughly 100,000 ethnic Hungarians there, though Budapest had yet to see anything delivered.
That deal allowed Magyar to lift the two-year veto imposed by Orbán, and the first cluster of talks was opened for Ukraine and Moldova on June 15, 2026.
The dispute dates back to Ukrainian laws of 2017 and 2019 that restricted Hungarian in public education and local administration. Ukraine’s parliament amended parts of that legislation in December 2023, although the Orbán government considered the changes insufficient.
Magyar noted that Serbia began its accession process 15 years ago and has opened two of six clusters, calling it double talk to single out one candidate for political reasons.
Ukrainian diplomatic sources told the Hungarian weekly HVG that Kyiv considered the block unjustified given improved relations, and expected Magyar and Zelensky to meet in September.
Hungarian foreign minister Anita Orbán said the same day that Budapest would not support accelerated accession for Ukraine under any circumstances.
