Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said the project to expand Hungary's Paks nuclear power plant is a national strategic and security interest.
After meeting Rosatom’s CEO to review the Paks investment, the minister said the war in Ukraine and the European Union’s “failed” sanctions policy has led to a global energy crisis, which will be prolonged. Countries that can produce most of their energy needs will be in the strongest position in the future, he added. With Hungary’s scarce mineral resources, the country will rely on nuclear energy to insulate it from “totally insane changes in the international energy market and skyrocketing energy prices,” he wrote. “So far, we’ve succeeded in stopping Brussels from placing our nuclear developments under sanctions, and we will prevent this in the future, too,” Minister Szijjártó added. The minister noted that he and Alexei Likhachev, the chief executive of Russian nuclear energy company Rosatom, reviewed the Paks investment at a meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. They agreed on steps to be taken in the coming weeks to ensure that the two new blocks are up and running at Paks by the end of the decade, he said.