Robert Fico voted for the EU military plan, despite pledging not to earlier.Continue reading
Energy cooperation between Hungary and Slovakia is closer than ever, as the security of supply of the two countries is constantly being challenged by Brussels and Kyiv, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said in Bratislava on Thursday.
“It is outrageous that the European Commission does not represent the interests of Member States, but has sided with Ukraine,” Mr. Szijjártó wrote in a Facebook post. “The European Commission has given us four guarantees for our energy security, but two of them have already been violated, therefore it is clear to everyone that we can only rely on ourselves,” he continued.
That is why we are implementing closer energy cooperation between Slovakia and Hungary than ever before: this year Slovakia is already buying more than half a billion cubic meters of natural gas via Hungary.
We have achieved that Russian petroleum products refined in Bratislava can also be used in Hungary and we are taking joint action against negative discrimination against nuclear energy,” he added.
Meanwhile, at Thursday’s EU summit, 26 out of 27 Member States signed a document on support for Ukraine and the continuation of the war. Dániel Deák, a senior analyst at the 21st Century Institute, pointed out that
in the end, even Robert Fico gave in, who was offered to take steps to restart Ukrainian gas transit, “which is unlikely to happen anyway.”
He added that the Slovak Prime Minister’s backtracking is understandable: “leading a three-party coalition government with a narrow majority, a softer breeze from Brussels could blow him over. This is the situation in most European countries, by the way: leaders without charisma and with weak power, easily blackmailed by the Brussels elite,” he stated.
As for the energy security guarantees given to Hungary by the EU,
the European Commission undertook to negotiate the resumption of gas transit to Ukraine with the involvement of Hungary, but the Hungarian government was not invited to these talks, despite repeated requests,
said the Foreign Minister earlier. Furthermore, the Commission also gave a guarantee that Ukraine would not attack the infrastructure responsible for energy supplies to the EU. However, Ukraine reportedly launched a drone attack on the TurkStream compressor station Russkaya on the night of February 28.
Via MTI, Featured photo via Pixabay