Hungary’s Prime Minister Orbán does not want to talk about the boycott of Russian oil at the upcoming EU summit. The Union is threatened with a fiasco.
Three weeks after Ursula von der Leyen’s announcement that the EU would no longer import Russian oil by the end of the year, it is becoming increasingly clear that these words by the President of the European Commission will hardly translate into concrete action. Despite all advances and financial offers from Brussels, Hungary’s threat of a veto has prevented the necessary unanimity for the adoption of this sixth package of sanctions since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24. And Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is not in the least interested in a compromise. On Tuesday, his letter to Charles Michel, President of the European Council, became public, in which Orbán stated that he did not want to speak about the boycott of Russian oil at the extraordinary European Council next Monday and Tuesday: “Discussing the sanctions package at top level would be in Absence of a consensus counterproductive. That would merely highlight our internal divisions without offering a realistic chance of resolving disagreements.”
No EU money for Orbán
The possibilities of pleasing Orbán with money in the tried and tested Brussels way are extremely limited. Last week, as part of its “Repower EU” plan to decouple the Union from Russian energy sources, the Commission proposed releasing two billion euros for the conversion of the oil infrastructure in landlocked member states that are particularly heavily dependent on crude oil from the Druzhba pipeline: i.e. Hungary , Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Orbán recently said that Hungary needed around 700 million euros. That could definitely be accommodated in the two billion package.