Reports: The government removed Russian company maintaining metro line 3 from the new sanctions package

On Wednesday, the EU member states adopted the 11th package of sanctions against Russia, which the Hungarian government also agreed to. The new sanctions decision is not yet public, but the Válasz Online portal has learned from sources in Brussels that the Hungarian government has managed to secure another waiver.

The text includes that the Russian company Metrovagonmas can continue to carry out maintenance of the Russian trains of metro line 3, and can export high-value equipment to Hungary for this purpose, the newspaper writes.

Last March, BKV (Budapest Transport Corporation) was confronted with the fact that, despite the 30-year guarantee given by the Russians for the trains of metro line 3, the first round of post-war sanctions made it impossible to enforce it. At the time, it was suggested that BKV could draw 10 billion forints from Metrovagonmas to cancel the contract for repairs, but this would not have solved the problem of where to find spare parts for trainsets manufactured only in Russia.

This has now been resolved, as Metro 3 has been exempted from the sanctions. It is possible that this is why the government voted in favour of the package, despite the fact that OTP was not removed from Ukraine's anti-corruption authority's list of companies that support the Russians. However, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó had earlier said that Budapest would veto the 11th sanctions package as long as the bank was not removed from the list.

However, according to the paper's Brussels sources, the Hungarian government has indicated that it will not approve a pending half-a-billion euro arms purchase subsidy as long as OTP is on the list.

According to an article in the Népszava daily, one in four of the Metrovagonmas metro cars that were remanufactured in rather poor quality were out of service in February. At that time, more and more cars had to be temporarily taken out of service due to serial defects, severe rusting and high maintenance needs.