Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has spoken with Alexander Novak, Russia’s deputy prime minister for energy affairs, via telephone, and they agreed to accelerate the pace of the upgrade of Hungary’s Paks nuclear power plant wherever possible.
Minister Szijjártó said Hungary will not support any proposals by Brussels that make Hungarian-Russian nuclear cooperation harder or render it impossible. Nuclear energy is the energy of the future, adding that the swift construction of the Paks plant’s new blocks was crucial for Hungary. Hungary’s government welcomes that the Russian government also assigns great importance to the upgrade of the plant, he said. The current energy crisis has made it clear that the countries that can produce most of their own energy will be the ones that are truly secure, he said. Minister Szijjártó and Novak also reviewed the situation of natural gas deliveries to Hungary. The minister said that thanks to the TurkStream gas pipeline, which he said was the only east-west pipeline in Europe operating at 100% capacity, gas deliveries to Hungary were uninterrupted and the country was receiving more than 12 million cubic metres of gas a day.