Reading the news this morning, just wanted to add a few thoughts on how consolidated Hungary, Slovakia and Austria are today on the EU agenda. Being quite different politically, these countries have developed a strikingly well coordinated approach to Ukraine's admission to the EU.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán: “It is clear that the proposal of the EU Commission on Ukraine’s EU accession is unfounded and poorly prepared.”

“There is no place for it on the agenda of the December #EUCO!”

Head of the Slovak parliament's foreign relations commission Marian Carey: "If Ukraine wants to become a member of the EU, it needs to take many more steps and go a very long way. The time when countries could get into the EU purely by political decision is long gone. Now Ukraine also has to meet all the criteria, as was the case, for example, with Slovakia."

Austrian Federal Chancellor Karl Nehammer: Vienna will not approve the start of negotiations under the current conditions because Ukraine should not be privileged over other candidates. Also, Austria is not ready to support the allocation of 50bn euros of aid to Ukraine.

Austrian foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg:

EU leaders should not favour Ukraine over the western Balkans when deciding whether to open accession negotiations. It is essential to anchor Ukraine and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the EU’s orbit to counter Russian influence.

“You cannot have certain groups on the fast lane, others on service lane.”

“There will be a very heated debate and we want the signals to be equal in both directions for geostrategic reasons.”

And finally, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama (quoted by Schallenberg): “Do we have to start a war in the Balkans to get your attention?”

This worries me a lot. As I mentioned before, we again have a group of “Central powers”, as if coming back from WWI era, trying to play their own game.