Following the European Council summit in Brussels, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said: "We have protected [the government’s cap on household utility bills] and successfully staved off a proposal by the Commission that would have prohibited the use of Russian oil in Hungary.”
“We have enough problems already: energy prices are soaring, inflation is high, and all of Europe is teetering on the edge of a global economic crisis because of the sanctions. Under these circumstances, it would have been unbearable for us if we had to run the Hungarian economy with dearer oil, it would have been like a nuclear bomb, but we successfully avoided this,” the prime minister said on Facebook in the early hours of Tuesday, after the first day of European Council summit in Brussels. “We brokered an agreement that states that those countries that get oil delivered via pipeline may continue managing it under the old conditions,” he said. “We have managed to avoid the most hair-raising idea,” he added. Speaking to journalists ahead of the summit, PM Orbán said Hungary was prepared to back the EU’s sixth sanctions package if a guarantee were made regarding the security of Hungary’s energy supply. In the event Hungary was forced to make costly investments such as building pipelines and upgrading oil refineries, oil would end up costing Hungarians more than it does now, he said.
Photo credit: MTI