Hungary launches legal proceedings to annul the REPowerEU regulation and enable Russian imports

Hungary will launch legal proceedings to have the REPowerEU regulation annulled, the minister of foreign affairs and trade said in Thessaloniki on Monday, adding that the regulation circumvented EU regulations with an aim to making Russian energy imports impossible.

FM Szijjártó: legal loophole used in REPowerEU vote

Banning the purchase of Russian oil and gas is diagonally opposed to Hungarian interests, Péter Szijjártó said, according to a ministry statement. “If we can’t buy crude and gas from Russia … the energy bills of households will triple and factories may face difficulties because of rising prices.”

As soon as the decision on adopting REPowerEU becomes official, Hungary will submit its claim to the Court of Justice of the EU, Szijjártó said. “The legislation was created using a legal loophole; regarding its contents, this is a sanction requiring a unanimous decision. In order to circumvent the objections of sovereign nation states, however, they employed a trick and garbed the decision as a trade measure so that a qualified majority was enough,” he said.

Violating the EU’s own legislation

Szijjártó said the decision was also violating the EU’s own legislation. “The Fundamental Treaty clearly states that nation states have the right to decide what energy resources they want to buy and who they want to buy it from.”

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He said the move was a “big legal trick” that went against Hungarian national interests. “Weaning the country off Russian crude and gas would bring a huge rise in utility costs. This is what Brussels and the Tisza Party want; we, a sovereign government, will prevent that,” he said.