As the EU struggles to keep Prime Minister Viktor Orban in line, Budapest has called on the bloc to mediate with Ukraine to restore Russian oil supplies to Hungary and Slovakia, DW reports.
With the focus in Brussels these days on the selection of the 27 new EU commissioners, one from each member country, many had hoped Hungary's six-month EU presidency would pass by uneventfully.
Political analysts, like Thu Nguyen from the Jacques Delors Center think tank, have said that since "little legislative work will be carried out during this period, for which a council presidency is particularly important," Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban would not have a chance to overly influence the daily work of the EU.
But Hungary, often described as the enfant terrible of the bloc, is determined to ruffle feathers and stay in the limelight.
After deliberately creating confusion over his recent visits to Kviv, Moscow and Beijing and implying the tour was under the EU's auspices, Orban has stirred things up once again. At issue this time is the shortage of Russian oil supplies to Budapest, which come via Kyiv.
On Monday, as the EU's foreign ministers were meeting in Brussels, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Ukraine's transit ban on Russian oil company Lukoil — which sends about 50% of its oil to Hungary and Slovakia through the Druzhba pipeline's southern spur — endangered Hungary's energy security.
Szijjarto said it was "unacceptable" on the part of Ukraine, especially since it wants to be a member of the European Union, to put the oil supply of two EU member states at "fundamental risk." His comments came after Hungary once again blocked the allocation of over €6 billion ($6.5 billion) in crucial EU military aid for Ukraine during Monday's meeting.
The EU imposed sanctions on the purchase of Russian crude oil after the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but exempted landlocked Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic from the ban until they could diversify their energy sources.
Szijjarto's accusation came after Ukraine imposed its own restrictions on Lukoil in June, in an effort to dent Moscow's oil earnings — a whopping $180 billion (€165.9 billion) just over the last year, according to the Kyiv School of Economics.
The move saw an immediate drop in Hungary's oil imports, and the threat of electricity shortages and high energy prices for Hungarians. Vaibhav Raghunandan, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air think tank, told DW that according to data available until July 20, "Hungary's import volumes have dropped by a third compared to June."
