‘Big battle’ expected at EU Energy Council meeting next week, says FM Szijjártó

Szijjártó Ukraine EU accession (1)
Photo: MTI/Kacsúr Tamás

Next week’s meeting of the European Union’s Energy Council is expected to see a “big battle”, the minister of foreign affairs and trade said on Facebook on Thursday, adding that the Hungarian government “will not allow Brussels to take the money needed to extend the war in Ukraine from Hungarian families.”

Péter Szijjártó said that the council meeting in Luxembourg on Monday is scheduled to table “a Von der Leyen-Zelensky proposal aiming to force us to stop buying natural gas, crude oil and nuclear fuel from Russia.” According to a ministry statement, Szijjártó said: “Brussels wants to support Ukraine by doubling or tripling the utility costs of Hungarian families.”

Szijjártó said he had talked to his Slovak counterpart, Juraj Blanar, and they had agreed that “such a gross violation of sovereignty is unacceptable. “The national energy mix is a matter of sovereignty that no outside player can interfere with. We are not willing to replace our already existing energy resources with more expensive and more unstable ones, not for the sake of Brussels or Kyiv,” Szijjártó said.

He pledged that the government would “protect Hungarian families from having to pay two or three times the current utility fees because of the blackmail of [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelensky!”

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Hungarian government proposes EU measures that could cut energy prices

Gábor Czepek, a state secretary at the Energy Ministry, outlined a four-point “patriotic solution” the government has drafted for the European Union at a professional forum in Győr (NW Hungary) on Thursday.

Addressing the event organised by the ministry, the Energy Strategy Institute, the Hungarian Renewable Energy Association and Széchenyi István University, Czepek said the government was proposing scaling back green targets that weren’t backed by funding instruments, exempting gas-fueled power plants from emissions quotas, rolling out an EU-wide energy storage programme and pressing for an immediate ceasefire in the war in Ukraine.

If Brussels would adopt the measures, gas and electricity prices would fall by at least 40pc, he added.

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