Government: Russia reliable supplier

The European Union is putting pressure on Hungary to curb its dependence on Russian energy yet the big barriers to diversification are Brussels’ policies, Péter Szijjártó, the foreign minister, said in Tbilisi on Thursday.

Ever since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia, the EU has faced uncertain energy supplies, Szijjártó told a panel discussion on the Silk Road Forum, according to a ministry statement.

The EU sees energy as a political instead of a physical matter, he said.

“You can’t heat houses and flats with political statements…” he said. Energy must be bought at the point where the infrastructure is available, and the infrastructure determines from where each state can get sufficient amounts of energy.

While diversification is vitally important, he said, the government cannot replace a reliable supplier but rather it must find as many new sources and transit routes as possible.

Szijjártó cautioned against putting states under pressure to act against their own national interests, adding that supplying Hungary with energy other than Russian sources would be “physically impossible”.

Azerbaijan, he said, is a supplier, but increasing imports depended on boosting pipeline capacity in south-east Europe. Yet Brussels will not provide financial support for this, he said, insisting the EU did not regard it as “trendy enough”, and besides “we won’t be using natural gas in fifteen years”.

“Firstly, we don’t know whether we will be using natural gas, but the question is not what will happen in fifteen years, but what will happen tomorrow.”

Endangering the supplies of a peer EU state and a candidate for EU membership is an massively hostile move