India, June 4 -- It took Peter Magyar, he said at a joint press conference with Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin on Thursday, three weeks to accomplish what his predecessor spent a decade refusing to do. Hungary has formally approved the opening of the first cluster of negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the European Union, Magyar announced, confirming that Kyiv had met the legislative requirements that Budapest had set as a precondition.

The announcement, made Thursday at a press conference also attended by Martin, marks the formal end of a veto that former Prime Minister Viktor Orban imposed in 2023 and that had frozen Ukraine's EU candidacy at its earliest procedural stage for over two years. Under the EU's accession framework,...