Did the European Union "bypass" the Czech Republic when distributing funds on December 15, 2023? No, that's not true: No direct allocation of funds among EU states was discussed or approved on that date. Instead, EU leaders focused on providing funds to address migration challenges and help countries affected by conflict, such as Ukraine.
The claim appeared in a TikTok video (archived here), published by @user57tyw5lqse on December 16, 2023, with no title.
It opened, as translated by Lead Stories staff from Czech to English:
SHOCK! Yesterday in Brussels, the governments of the Czech Republic and Slovakia allocated hundreds of billions to Turkey, immigrants, and Ukraine! Czechs and Slovaks got nothing.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Dec 20 13:15:25 2023 UTC)
On December 14 and 15, 2023, EU leaders met to discuss allocating funds to assist war-torn nations, such as Ukraine (archived here). They reiterated their commitment (archived here) "to continue to provide strong political, financial, economic, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support to Ukraine and its people for as long as it takes," but failed to reach an agreement (archived here) on a 50 billion-euro package in financial aid for Ukraine, as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán vetoed it. Talks are expected to resume in late January or early February (archived here). The meeting, though, did not involve any distribution of funds among EU countries.
