Analysis
Democratic Security
Hungary-Ukraine Spat Gains a New Dimension – OVERVIEW
1 October 2026
While the NATO Summit in Vilnius was short of an official invitation for Ukraine to join the Alliance, it did bring some positive developments. Most notable is a new institutional and procedural framework that is being debated and developed right now.
One of the outputs of the Vilnius NATO Summit was the decision to launch a new institutional platform, the NATO–Ukraine Council (NUC), to substitute the previously active NATO–Ukraine Commission, launched in 1997.
In the run-up to the Summit, allies already proposed some modalities for the functioning of this new body, with a broad framework for its design and functions. So far, two meetings of the Council have been held in Vilnius and Brussels.