At a July 17 meeting of the Council of the EU’s Working Party on Enlargement, known as Coela, Hungary withheld approval of the screening results for clusters two and three for Ukraine, which cover the internal market and competitiveness and inclusive growth. Screening is the European Commission’s analytical comparison of a candidate country’s legislation with EU law, and member state experts must sign off on the results by consensus before official letters are sent out inviting the candidate to submit its negotiating positions, thereby advancing toward an intergovernmental conference.
Hungary only gave its consent to the letter for Moldova on cluster three, according to European Pravda, citing sources within the EU, although representatives of several member states objected to splitting up the two candidates. Ultimately, no decision was adopted. Officials in Brussels say there is no consensus among member states on opening the remaining clusters simultaneously. In contrast, Ukrainian officials maintain the country has met the technical requirements for all six.
Ireland, which currently holds the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union, had hoped to begin preparations to open the next clusters, or at least one of them, before the summer recess, so that an intergovernmental conference could be held as early as September. That attempt failed on July 22, at Coela’s final session before the break, when Hungary again withheld approval of the screening results for clusters two and three for both Ukraine and Moldova, and the item was carried over to the working party’s next meeting in September.
Ireland’s Prime Minister, Micheál Martin, traveled to Kyiv the following day for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He said opening the clusters was the key step so that negotiations could proceed within each of them, and called the timetable realistic if other member states cooperated. In an interview with Ukrainian News (UBN), published on July 28, Martin set out the presidency’s aim.
“Our objective is to open all clusters before the end of the year,” he said. “We have already opened Cluster 2. We now want to open Cluster 3 as quickly as possible, and then move on to the remaining clusters,” Martin added.
Hungary’s refusals to move the process forward followed the formal opening of cluster six, covering common foreign and security policy, trade and relations with third countries, in Brussels on July 14, which Hungary had cleared earlier that month after previously blocking clusters two through six at the technical level. The EU has since published its common position on the benchmarks Ukraine must meet to close that cluster. Taras Kachka, then Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, said at the time of the opening that the remaining four clusters would not be pushed past the summer.
The Hungarian government has consistently held the position that Ukraine’s accession can proceed only once the language and education rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia are settled. The bilateral agreement the two governments formalized in June was incorporated into Ukraine’s minority rights action plan as part of the accession process, alongside an interim benchmark under which failure to implement its terms would halt progress in cluster one.
Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers adopted Resolution 929 on July 15, which from Sep. 1 withdraws earmarked state education funding, transferred from the national budget to local budgets, from general secondary schools with fewer than 45-60 pupils, depending on the grades they teach. Institutions operating a class or group taught in a national minority language that is an official EU language are exempt, a category covering Hungarian-language instruction in Transcarpathia.
Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Anita Orbán, said the two sides had also agreed to establish an inter-institutional working group to monitor implementation jointly. The body will consist of three members from each country, will be led on the Hungarian side by the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights, and is to respond to alleged rights violations affecting citizens of either state.
Meanwhile, Kyiv reorganized its Brussels operation across the same week. The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, approved a new cabinet on July 16 in which Vsevolod Chentsov, until then Ukraine’s permanent representative to the EU, took over as Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration in place of Kachka.
Zelensky said the following day that he had offered Kachka the post of Ukraine’s representative to the EU, combining the post with the duties of trade representative in bilateral agreements with key partners. He said decisions on four more clusters were pending and that Kachka would be able to carry out the work most effectively from the mission. The president signed the decree dismissing Chentsov from the post of EU representative on July 22, the same day Hungary blocked the clusters for the second time.
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of July 31, 2026.
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