During negotiations on the fight against climate change, the battle - from a Central European and Hungarian standpoint - will be about "not allowing Brussels bureaucrats to have poor people and poor countries to pay for the costs of combating climate change," said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban ahead of the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday.

The Hungarian prime minister addressed an objective of the European Council, that Member States take a joint stand about making the European economy carbon-neutral by 2050.

„We all know that climate change is a big problem, and we all know that fighting against it is a huge undertaking, which costs an enormous amount of money. We must therefore receive clear financial guarantees and we will negotiate the terms of that,” Viktor Orban said.

Orban stressed that the Hungarian government was also determined to make the European economy climate neutral by 2050, adding that it was ready to sign an agreement to that effect.

Hungary s premier underlined that the parties are also expected to discuss a related side issue, the future of nuclear energy. Hungary would like „all reservations, critiques and attacks about nuclear energy here in Brussels to be set aside once and for all,” because „there s no carbon-neutral European economy without nuclear power,” Orban added.

On the first day of the EU summit, the European Council is expected to finalise guidelines regarding the bloc s long-term strategy to tackle climate change. The leaders of the member states will primarily focus on how to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.