Five EU Countries Propose Safeguards and Temporary Voting Restrictions for Future Members

EU ambassadors meeting in Brussels on Friday reached unanimous agreement to open the first 'fundamentals' cluster of accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova at an intergovernmental conference in Luxembourg on Monday, June 15. The cluster covers core rule-of-law and democratic principles that candidate countries must uphold. Hungary's new Prime Minister Péter Magyar, who took power in May after defeating Orbán, agreed to drop Budapest's veto following a deal with Kyiv on the rights of Ukraine's Hungarian ethnic minority; however, Magyar has stated Hungary does not support a fast-track accession and will hold a referendum on Ukrainian membership if all chapters are eventually closed. In parallel, a joint paper by Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg — five of the EU's six founding members — proposed embedding new safeguards into future accession treaties, including a non-regression clause, a sincere-cooperation safeguard, temporary restrictions on new members' voting rights in areas requiring unanimity such as foreign policy and the EU budget, and a lowered threshold for triggering Article 7 sanctions from unanimity to a four-fifths majority. The initiative is explicitly framed as a response to Orbán's tenure, during which Hungary repeatedly vetoed key decisions and had billions in EU funds frozen over rule-of-law concerns. The paper is timed to influence the drafting of Montenegro's accession treaty, which is expected to set a blueprint for remaining candidates including Ukraine, Moldova, Albania, North Macedonia, and Serbia. Broader debates continue over whether Ukraine might receive some form of associate membership as a faster interim step, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz having floated that idea last month.