Hungary has signalled it will ease its veto on more accession negotiation progress for Ukraine and Moldova this week, according to FT

Hungary's government has a long track record of using unanimity requirements inside the EU as leverage, typically linking vetoes on enlargement, sanctions renewals and financial assistance packages to disputes over its own blocked EU funds and bilateral grievances with Kyiv. Signals of this kind have in past episodes preceded the formal step rather than settled it, with the veto sometimes reasserted at the decisive council session after concessions elsewhere, so the distinction between easing obstruction and formally withdrawing it matters. The coupling of Ukraine and Moldova is itself the established pattern: the two files have moved together through the accession machinery, and progress on one has tended to drag the other. The mechanism for markets runs primarily through EU budget and reconstruction expectations, CEE sovereign and currency sentiment, and the read-across to Hungary's own frozen funds dispute, where Budapest's willingness to trade on enlargement has historically been a tell that a side deal on cohesion or recovery money is in motion. Worth noting is that accession negotiation clusters are procedurally incremental, and headline progress has in comparable stretches produced more movement in political-risk premia than in any directly tradeable instrument. The follow-ons are the formal council outcome this week and any parallel movement on Hungarian funding conditionality.