Anger at Hungary's Orbán prompts top EU officials to boycott meetings

The European Commission will carry out a partial boycott of Hungary's EU presidency in the wake of controversial trips abroad taken by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán which angered top officials.

Informal meetings of EU ministers will not be attended by EU commissioners, but only by senior officials "in light of recent developments marking the start of the Hungarian presidency," a spokesman for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on the social media platform X.

The decision comes after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin just days after Hungary assumed the EU's rotating presidency at the start of July.

Orbán said he was on a "peace mission" but EU leaders strongly condemned the trip and stressed that he did not have an EU mandate for any negotiations.

Orbán also undertook visits to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in a flurry of diplomacy that caused significant irritation in Brussels.

Chief spokesman Eric Mamer on Monday also announced that the European Commission would forego its traditional inaugural visit to Hungary to welcome in the Hungarian presidency - a symbolic blow to Budapest.

Hungary's Minister for European Union Affairs, János Bóka, hit back at the commission decision.

"The EU is an international organization constituted by its member states. The EU Commission is an institution of the EU. The EU Commission cannot cherry pick institutions and [member states] it wants to cooperate with," he wrote on X.

"Are all commission decisions now based on political considerations?" he wrote.

Other countries had already responded to Orbán's actions at the start of the EU presidency.

Lithuania and Sweden announced that they would temporarily not be sending ministers to Hungary for meetings.