BUDAPEST (Reuters) -The European Union’s plan to ban Russian energy imports must be prevented “by all means”, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told state radio on Friday.
The European Commission will next month propose legal measures to phase out the EU’s imports of all Russian gas and liquefied natural gas by the end of 2027, the EU executive said earlier in May. Member states Slovakia and Hungary, which rely on Russian oil and gas supplies, have opposed the proposed ban.
“We have to try to stop this Ukrainian push to completely ban Russian gas from Europe. We must prevent it by all means. Because there is no point in having a pipeline if we are not allowed to bring any gas through it,” Orban said.
He said if the EU compensated Hungary for the cost of the energy ban, then the government would be “open to negotiations” on the issue.
Slovakia and Hungary continue to receive Russian gas and oil and have argued with Ukraine over its decision to halt with the end of 2024 gas flows from the east through its territory.
The EU has imposed sanctions on most Russian oil imports but not on gas due to opposition from Slovakia and Hungary, which maintain closer ties with Moscow.
The Commission’s proposal only requires a qualified majority in the European Parliament to pass, meaning that the two central European states would not be able to block it, but their objections could complicate the process.
Hungary imports most of its gas via the Turkstream pipeline, which runs under the Black Sea to Turkey and on to Southeast Europe. In the first quarter of this year, volumes through TurkStream’s European section rose 16% year-on-year to around 4.5 billion cubic metres, driven by higher demand in Hungary and Slovakia.
(Reporting by Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Tomasz Janowski)
