“This proposal amounts to a nuclear bomb” – Hungary announces its veto on the oil embargo


According to Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, Hungary will not accept the planned sanctions package.
Source: Marcus Brandt/dpa/Pool/dpa
Hungary votes against the embargo planned by the European Union on Russian oil imports. The sanctions package means “only problems” for Hungary. The Hungarian people must not pay the price of war. Now Ursula von der Leyen is traveling to Hungary to mediate.
Dhe EU country, Hungary, wants to veto the embargo planned by the European Union on imports of Russian oil. “Hungary will not vote (in the EU Council) for this package because the Hungarian people should not pay the price for the war (in Ukraine),” Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told parliament on Monday. Budapest. For the sanctions package to be implemented, all countries must agree.
In negotiations that have been ongoing since last week and will continue this week, EU countries have yet to reach an agreement on an oil embargo against Russia. The European Commission had proposed to give Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic more time to fully implement the stoppage of deliveries. However, the proposal did not go far enough for Hungary – but also for other countries.
The sanctions package means “only problems” for Hungary, Szijjarto said on Monday. He has no solution on how the country, which depends on Russian oil, can replace missing imports. “This proposal from Brussels is equivalent to launching a nuclear bomb on the Hungarian economy,” he said. Right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban had already attempted the same comparison in a radio interview last Friday.
In the fight against the EU oil embargo, Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen is currently traveling to Hungary. A spokesman in Brussels said von der Leyen wanted to meet Orban on Monday to talk to him about security of supply.
Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova speaks with Jan Philipp Burgard, editor-in-chief of the WELT news channel, about May 9 and the war in Ukraine. Subscribe to the “WELT talks” podcast, for example, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Deezer or directly via RSS feed.