On Monday, Borrell said that the next meeting of the foreign ministers would be held in Brussels, not Budapest, due to Hungary's position on Ukraine.
In total, 13 countries said that they preferred to meet in Budapest, while five others, especially states in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, said that they would boycott the gathering in the Hungarian capital., according to Politico. In the end, Borrell picked Brussels in a move that aims to "send a signal, even if it is a symbolic signal," to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the newspaper added.
The informal meeting of EU foreign ministers was initially scheduled to be held in Budapest in late August to mark the beginning of Hungary's EU presidency.
Earlier in July, Orban met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping as part of his diplomatic efforts to open up lines of communication to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. He also met with US presidential candidate Donald Trump. Some EU leaders protested what they see as Orban’s misuse of the bloc’s rotating presidency.