Zoltán Kovács, the state secretary for international communications and relations, said a change of direction is needed in European politics because the energy sanctions are clearly destroying the European Union’s economy.
The state secretary said in a video on Facebook that the restrictions imposed by Brussels on oil and oil products must not be left unmentioned. For a long period after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the EU said no sanctions would be imposed on energy, he said. Then everything changed in June when Brussels forced through a decision on the ban of Russian crude oil and oil derivatives, he added. “We said right from the beginning that imposing any sanction on energy would equal to dropping an atomic bomb on the Hungarian economy and also on the European economy,” he said. “In the case of Hungary, which has no seaports and can therefore only receive gas and crude oil by pipeline, it is obvious that a switch would take long years and require many hundreds of billion forints,” he added. After lengthy fights and a tough battle, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has managed to achieve an exemption from sanctions on (pipeline-delivered) Russian crude oil, he said. “By now, we can see that these sanctions hurt Europe much more than they hurt Russia, which has increased revenues while energy prices and inflation break loose in Europe,” he said. “If enough of us express our support and give our opinion, we will manage to change these decisions,” he added referring to the government’s National Consultation survey.