As US President Donald J. Trump’s courageous and much-needed efforts to put an end to the Ukrainian war gain momentum, with the American leader having now met with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, and then with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington, there are rumours that the EU’s leadership has not given up on its dreams of having Ukraine join the bloc. Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and London have apparently all asked Trump to pressure Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán into abandoning his long-lasting reservations to the Ukrainians beginning accession talks. If true, this would signal yet another grave misjudgment on the part of the Europeans. In fact, however, Budapest’s position is not obstinacy—it is foresight. And foresight is precisely what the rest of Europe now lacks.
It is often said that politics is the art of the possible. When it comes to Ukraine’s EU ambitions, the numbers speak for themselves—and with brutal candour. Three and a half years after the beginning of full-scale hostilities, Ukraine is a wrecked nation. To “rebuild” it would require a sum scarcely imaginable—€2.5 trillion, according to the calculations of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs. This is twelve times the entire budget of the Union. Europe cannot afford such a fantasy: Germany, once the continent’s economic and industrial motor, is crippled by deindustrialisation and stagnation; France is being suffocated by unsustainable deficits; Italy is barely growing, and, with a government debt of almost 140 per cent of GDP, hardly has the fiscal flexibility to fund geopolitical adventurism. How can these nations, themselves overwhelmed by debt and poor growth, be expected to bankroll the recovery of a country shattered by war?
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