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While a French media outlet accused Hungary of increasing its dependence on Russian energy, Eurostat data shows the opposite.
“European countries are striving to reduce their dependence on Russian gas, but Hungary is an exception,” claims French newspaper Les Echos in its Monday article. According to the media outlet, “Budapest is increasing its gas supplies from Russia and is starting to expand its nuclear power plant in cooperation with Russia.”
“This controversial project illustrates the relationship between Hungarian nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent years,” the author adds.
However, Eurostat’s – the EU’s statistics office – figures paint a different picture. An article in Hungarian weekly Mandiner points out that according to Eurostat data, until the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Hungary was the one among the V4 countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary) that had reduced dependence on Russian oil the most.
Géza Sebestyén, head of the MCC Economic Policy Center, writes that Slovakia comes last in the imaginary ranking, with its dependence on Russian oil imports falling by only 9 percentage points in nine years (from 87 to 78).
The Czech Republic’s dependence on Russian oil imports fell by 16 percentage points (from 44 to 28) in nine years. The author adds that the Czechs’ exposure was understandably lower than the V4 average, for geographical reasons.
Poland’s dependence fell by 22 percentage points (from 80 to 58).
Hungary’s dependence on Russian oil imports fell by 34 percentage points over nine years. While in January 2013, 80 percent of the country’s total oil imports came from Russia, in January 2022 the figure was only 46 percent.
The summary shows that from January 2013 until January 2022 (the last month before the war in Ukraine), all four V4 countries reduced their exposure to Russian oil. Hungary was also the only V4 country to reduce its dependence from above to below average.
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