Is Romania Losing Its Veto Right? A Letter, a Lie, and Viktor Orbán's Long Shadow

On Monday, Romanian Foreign Minister Oana Țoiu point by point refuted the claim, spread mainly by AUR, that Romania is giving up its veto right or losing it within the European Union. The minister said this was "a lie from beginning to end," and that the document at the center of the dispute does not take away any member state's ability to block decisions — it merely requires that whoever uses that power justify the decision by citing national interest. According to Țoiu, no one's approval is needed for this justification, so the veto right remains untouched.

The minister added that the decision-making rules cannot be changed overnight. On military matters, the treaties simply do not allow it, and in other areas, heads of state and government would first have to unanimously agree on a proposal, which would then go before national parliaments. The Romanian parliament is not discussing anything of the sort because no such proposal exists. She also sent a message to AUR and the politicians rallying around this issue: Romania has strength within the Union when it also has politicians brave enough to use that strength, rather than merely wanting to complain.

The debate was triggered by a letter made public on September 1, sent by the foreign ministers of eleven EU member states — Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Romania, Spain and Sweden — to Kaja Kallas, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. The document, reported on by Euronews and Politico, draws on the lessons of the Orbán years and sets out five principles for making the common foreign and security policy more effective.

1. Member states should respect mutual solidarity.

2. Instead of vetoing, they should more often use so-called constructive abstention, whereby a country does not vote in favor but also does not block the others.

3. Foreign policy decisions should not be linked to unrelated matters.

4. Whoever blocks a decision should provide a well-founded justification.

5. Finally, they should examine what possibilities the existing treaties offer for gradually moving from unanimity to qualified majority voting.

According to one of the letter's most-quoted lines, without this the Union has legitimacy but not power. Politico notes that while the document opens the door to broader use of qualified majority voting, it does not demand a complete overhaul of the voting system. The sentence Țoiu also quoted actually just restates the logic already embedded in the EU treaty. Article 31 of the Treaty on European Union already allows certain foreign and security policy decisions to be made by qualified majority, but in such cases any member state can block the vote by invoking "vital and stated reasons of national policy," sending the matter to the heads of state and government, who then decide unanimously. The same article prohibits decisions with military or defense implications from being taken by qualified majority — so the letter does not abolish the veto, but asks that whoever uses it explain why.

As for an actual shift to qualified majority voting, the treaties contain a classic catch. The so-called passerelle, or bridging clause, would allow member states to move to majority decision-making in certain areas without amending the treaties, but the states themselves must decide unanimously to do so, and under the general bridging clause, objection from a single national parliament is enough to block it. Abolishing the veto would therefore require veto-free unanimity — meaning opponents of the reform could block it using the very tool it seeks to eliminate. The near-term disappearance of the veto is thus legally almost impossible — Victor Negrescu, the Romanian vice-president of the European Parliament, also currently called treaty change unlikely.

The issue now seized upon by AUR is, moreover, three and a half years old. On May 4, 2023, nine member states — Belgium, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy, Spain and Slovenia — set up the so-called Group of Friends on qualified majority voting, which Romania joined a few weeks later, under then-Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu. Aurescu stressed even then that alongside more efficient decision-making, it remained important for Romania to have mechanisms in place to protect national interests. Diana Șoșoacă called the move "a betrayal" and a surrender of sovereignty at the time, warning that large states could one day use majority voting to drag Romania into a war against Russia — an absurd claim, since the treaties explicitly exclude military decisions from majority voting. Since then, however, the issue has gained new momentum: in spring 2026, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen both spoke out in favor of qualified majority voting, with von der Leyen calling it an important way to avoid systemic blockades.

Who We Can Thank: Viktor Orbán

The fact that matters have come to this point at all is largely thanks to Viktor Orbán, Hungary's prime minister who was ousted in April, and who for years put the veto right in the service of the Kremlin's interests. The Orbán government blocked the 50-billion-euro EU support package for Ukraine for months, held up for years the multi-billion-euro reimbursement owed to member states from the European Peace Facility for weapons sent to Ukraine, and used the regular renewal of sanctions packages to extort ever more concessions — removing oligarchs from the sanctions list, gas-supply guarantees, the release of frozen EU funds. In December 2023, at a European Council meeting, he had to leave the room so the others could decide without him on opening EU accession talks with Ukraine, and afterward he spent years blocking the opening of negotiating chapters by citing the rights of ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia. Orbán thus turned into standard practice exactly the behavior that the letter from the eleven states now seeks to end: using the veto not to defend vital national interests, but to extort concessions on unrelated matters and to serve a wartime aggressor. It is no coincidence that the letter speaks of the "lessons of the Orbán years," or that the reform gained new momentum after the change of government in Hungary.

The problem, however, did not disappear with Orbán's downfall. On September 21, under pressure from Slovakia, Luxembourg and France, the EU removed from its sanctions list Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman, two of the biggest backers of the Putin regime, because unanimity required their consent. Blackmail via the veto is thus not the fault of one man, but of a system that anyone willing can exploit — Robert Fico's Slovakia can use it today just as Orbán's Hungary once did.

Who Does the Veto Hurt, and Who Does It Benefit?

The question, of course, is not black and white. The Baltic states, for instance, did not sign the letter, because smaller member states see the veto as an important safeguard against the influence of the larger ones. Croatia also opposed the reform, arguing that unanimity is the only guarantee of equality among small states. This is a legitimate concern, and Romania has reason to pay attention to it too — yet Romania's own experience shows that the veto can mean not only protection, but also punishment. In December 2022, Austria alone vetoed Romania's accession to Schengen, and full membership was only achieved in January 2025 — meaning Romania was at the mercy of a single country's veto for years. For a country with a war raging on its border, Russian drones flying into its airspace, and a security that depends on a strong, fast-acting Europe, a veto wielded by a Kremlin-friendly government is a far greater threat than occasionally losing out in a majority vote.

It is fortunate that the letter supposedly stripping Romania of its veto right drew attention on the very same day that all twenty-seven member states unanimously adopted the largest Russia sanctions package to date, comprising nearly 1,600 entries. This too shows that unanimous decisions can be reached when no one is engaging in blackmail — and that abolishing the veto would truly hurt only those who want to use it for blackmail.

Ugar