Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 4/8/2025; Author: Marija Ćosić
Numerous media outlets reported on a “referendum” in which Hungarians said “no” to Ukraine’s potential entry into the EU. This is a manipulation; Orbán’s government conducted a non-binding (and a suggestive) survey on this issue, in which less than one-third of voters participated.
Several regional media outlets claimed that 95% of Hungary’s citizens voted in a referendum against Ukraine joining the European Union. On June 26, 2025, the website of Radio Television of Republika Srpska published an article with the following headline:
Published referendum results: 95 percent of Hungarians said “no” to Ukraine in the EU
The article stated that the results of the “referendum” were announced by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
According to the results of the referendum on Ukraine’s accession to the European Union, more than two million Hungarian citizens, that is, 95 percent of participants, voted against it, Orbán said.
Other media also reported on a “referendum” in Hungary. Some, such as the News Agency of Republika Srpska, Sputnik, and the portal Banjaluka (.net), highlighted in their headlines Orbán’s statement that “95 percent of Hungarians” had “said ‘no’ to Ukraine in the EU,” while in the articles they also referred to this vote as a referendum. These articles further stated that “the Hungarian prime minister emphasized that such referendum results give him a ‘strong mandate’ to defend Budapest’s position at the summit in Brussels.”
Articles referring to the vote in Hungary as a referendum appeared on a large number of regional portals (1, 2, 3, 4).
What are the Facts?
Hungarians did not vote on Ukraine’s EU membership in a referendum. This vote was organized through a process called “national consultations”, and its results are not binding. Fact-checking platforms Raskrinkavanje from Montenegro, Faktograf from Croatia, and Istinomer from Serbia analyzed the false claims made by domestic media about this vote. However, despite their analyses pointing out the inaccuracies, media outlets did not correct their articles, and these disinformation narratives continued to spread in Bosnia and Herzegovina and across our language area.
The vote, whose results Orbán announced to journalists upon his arrival at the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels on June 26, 2025, was called Voks 2025. It was a “national consultation” in which citizens were asked: “Do you support Ukraine’s membership in the European Union?” According to Faktograf, the question was sent to households in envelopes that featured “the risks of Ukraine’s EU accession.”
This vote lasted from mid-April until June 21. Citizens were able to vote online or by sending printed ballots via post. According to results announced by the Hungarian authorities, just over 2.284.000 votes were received. “No” was the answer on more than 2.168.000 ballots.
As Faktograf explained in its analysis, “national consultations” in Hungary are not the same as a referendum.
Back in 2017, Eszter Nova, then a fellow at the Institute for Financial Studies in Budapest, author of the blog Meanwhile in Budapest, and now a lecturer at the CEVRO Institute in Prague and a political commentator, wrote about what “national consultations” are and what they are used for in an article for Germany’s Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.
“The so-called ‘national consultations’ in Hungary are actually direct marketing campaigns in the form of letters sent to every Hungarian household in the name of the ‘Government of Hungary.’ They are accompanied by billboard campaigns across the country, with full support from state-controlled media, that is, media dominated by Fidesz (Viktor Orbán’s political party), as well as ads in almost all local newspapers,” Nova wrote in the 2017 article.
Still, it is not possible to fully and independently verify the results Orbán announced. According to the Hungarian portal Telex, numerous irregularities were observed during the consultations. For example, citizens could vote multiple times online by using different email addresses. The government did not allow independent monitoring of the voting process or of the vote counting.
The Hungarian government, however, told Telex it was not assumed that citizens would deliberately falsify the vote.
“In response to doubts about the credibility and reliability of the survey, the Government Information Center told Telex that the Government does not assume that people want to cheat, but that they want to express their opinion, as demonstrated by the number of voters”, the Telex article stated.
The same article also highlighted that the Hungarian government made great efforts to encourage as many people as possible to participate in these “consultations”. Still, only about 30% of registered voters took part. More than five million Hungarians did not participate, Telex stressed. Since this was not an official referendum and such consultations are not legally binding, it is unsurprising that the majority of citizens did not take part.
“National consultations” in Hungary are held relatively often, and according to the announced results, voter turnout varies. However, a majority turnout has never been recorded in any of them.
Hungary prescribes a specific legal procedure for holding referendums, and the decision reached by referendum is binding for the country’s parliament. Voting in a referendum, unlike in “national consultations”, must be held on a Sunday, lasts one day, is carefully monitored, and voter eligibility is precisely defined.
A spokesperson for the European Commission also emphasized that in this case it was a matter of “non-binding consultations”, noting that it was up to the Hungarian authorities to decide whether to act on the results.
Thus, although the Hungarian government may or may not use the findings of such “consultations” when forming its policies, they are not legally binding. This context was absent from the aforementioned media articles. In them, “national consultations” were incorrectly called a referendum, which implied that the results were binding. Readers were not informed about what these “consultations” actually are, nor about how many citizens actually participated. Potential manipulations of the results were also omitted in these articles.
Since Orbán announced the results of these “consultations” in Hungarian, and some of the video clips of his response to journalists’ questions about these “consultations” are incomplete and unclear, we cannot reliably claim whether he himself called them a “referendum.”
The Hungarian government, led by Orbán, officially opposes Ukraine joining the European Union, with Orbán emphasizing that such a move could destabilize this bloc.According to the aforementioned facts, we rate the claim that Hungarians voted in a referendum overwhelmingly against Ukraine’s EU membership, while omitting a series of relevant facts about the vote and its results as manipulation of facts.
