Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said that despite all the difficulties, Russia is willing to provide cheap natural gas and crude oil to Hungary, whereas utility prices in Hungary would multiply 2-3 times if a plan devised by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to ban Russian fossil fuel imports is approved.
Speaking in St Petersburg on Thursday, after talks with Russian government officials and energy company representatives, Minister Szijjártó said the latest plans by von der Leyen and Zelensky involved banning Russian crude oil and natural gas purchases by Hungary, which would quickly result in an increase in utility fees.
"We consider this unacceptable and will not allow Brussels or Kyiv to interfere in our sovereignty. It is our sovereign decision who we buy energy from, when, and under what contracts. We will not allow them to push us into one-sided dependence. We will not allow them to turn the two crude oil pipelines leading to Hungary into one, and we will not allow them to close the largest natural gas pipeline leading to Hungary," he said.
"And we will also not allow them to make Hungarian families and Hungarian people pay two, three times or four times more for their utilities than so far," he added.
Minister Szijjártó said he agreed with representatives of the Russian government and the largest energy companies to maintain strategic cooperation in energy despite the efforts by Brussels and Kyiv to undermine this.
"We will continue to rely on Russian energy, and we will continue to maintain Europe's lowest utility fees in Hungary," he said. "The leaders of the largest Russian energy companies have made clear that despite the difficulties and the obstacles of Brussels, they are ready to continue providing Hungary cheap natural gas and cheap crude oil," he added.
"The construction of the new reactors in the Paks nuclear power station will continue. Crude oil supplies to Hungary will continue, and the TurkStream gas network will continue to operate at full capacity. This guarantees Hungary's energy supplies, and what's most important, the leaders of Russian energy companies and Russian political leaders are dedicated to securing cheap crude oil and natural gas supplies for Hungary, despite all the difficulties," he said.
Minister Szijjártó said politicising issues around energy supply was "extremely harmful", with an impact on European competitiveness as "gas costs several times in Europe as in America or China". "If we continue like this, we will certainly not be competitive," Minister Szijjártó warned, adding that Europe's economic growth used to rest on modern western technologies and cheap energy from Russia. "By now, we have been cut off from Russian resources" and there is no alternative, he said.
The minister called for a return to "approaches based on rationality and common sense". He said those values were still present in the economy, and he mentioned the upgrade of the Paks nuclear plant implemented by Rosatom as an example.
Minister Szijjártó met, among others, Russian deputy prime ministers Denis Manturov and Alexander Novak, Rosatom director general Alexey Likhachev, and Gazprom chief executive Alexey Miller.