Olha Stefanishyna, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, claims that 26 EU member states were considering depriving Hungary of its right to veto had it blocked the decision to start negotiations with Ukraine.
Article 7 suspends their voting rights. Requires unanimity of all other EU members.
It's the closest EU charter allows to evicting a member state. It effectively suspends the state's membership.
Quite frankly the should have. Orban is a blatantly corrupt Putin lapdog who has been siphoning EU funds for years into his own pocket and that of his cronies.
Hungary used to have a mutual defence pact with PiS-era Poland that scuppered any attempts by the EU to discipline either country. Not that PiS are no longer in power in Poland, hasn’t Fico’s Slovakia stepped into the role?
Identifying the breach requires unanimity (excluding the state concerned), but sanctions require only a qualified majority.
Wait, how does this work? Can sanctions be instated without identifying a country as being in breach? Or is unanimity first required, and only after that, the majority can decide what the sanction is?