Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Tuesday that an important battle started in Brussels on Monday, adding that Hungary's energy supply is at stake.
"At stake is no less than whether Hungarian households can be saved from the plan of Brussels bureaucrats and [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, which would jeopardise Hungary's oil and gas supplies and make Hungarians' utility costs skyrocket," the prime minister said in a post on Facebook.
While the prices of oil and gas are on the increase in the wake of the war in the Middle East, "it appears as if Brussels wants to exacerbate the problem deliberately ... they want to ban Russian energy from the European Union at all costs," PM Orbán said.
Europe already buys energy at higher prices than its competitors due to its "ill-advised sanctions policy", he said, adding that "if Brussels eliminates Russian supplies for good, it will mean shutting down the most important pipelines supplying oil and gas to Hungary."
"Amidst a war, this is unbelievably dangerous," PM Orbán added.
"Doing so while the war is raging in the Middle East is sheer madness. Why are they still doing that? Brussels bureaucrats don't consider the interests of European people ... they are terrified that the war could be over, and they will be faced with what they have achieved with the tremendous amount of weapons and money sent to the war," PM Orbán said. "They are fighting for political survival; therefore, they are not concerned if the costs of Hungarian households are sky-high as a consequence of their decisions," he added.
"We won't let ourselves be made to pay for the latest lunacy in Brussels," PM Orbán said, noting that representatives of Hungary and Slovakia recently thwarted a decree "that would have given the green light to proposals by the [European] Commission."