Szijjártó approves extension of sanctions, says Hungary received requested guarantees
January 27. 2025. – 04:55 PM
updated
The Council of the European Union extended the sanctions against Russia for another six months, the body said.
On the same day, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó announced on Facebook that
“Hungary has received the guarantees it requested pertaining to the energy security of our country”.
Szijjártó met with his EU counterparts on Monday to unanimously approve the maintaing of the economic sanctions, which need to be extended every six months and are due to expire at the end of the month. The decision would have been taken without debate if all member states' permanent representatives had given their backing, but the Hungarian government blocked the process on Friday.
For a long time, the Hungarian government said the decision, which is usually automatically agreed upon was not timely, citing the US presidential elections. But after Donald Trump threatened to impose tougher sanctions on Russia last week, on Friday, Viktor Orbán said his government's agreement was conditional on Ukraine resuming gas transit towards the EU. "I pulled the handbrake", he said, adding that "if the Ukrainians want help, for example for us to sanction the Russians, then they should reopen" the pipeline.
Speaking on Saturday, Szijjártó fine-tuned this a bit, and spoke about energy security in a post ahead of Monday's meeting of EU foreign ministers:
"our vote will be decided by whether the European Commission will provide a guarantee that it will act in all future cases where the energy security of EU member states is threatened from outside the European Union".
The permanent representatives were summoned to an extraordinary meeting on Monday morning prior to the ministers' meeting, where they approved the decision, paving the way for the ministers to say yes.
According to Szijjártó, "the European Commission has committed itself to protecting the natural gas and oil pipelines leading to the Member States of the European Union.
They made it clear that the integrity of the energy infrastructure supplying EU Member States is a matter of security for the whole EU. The European Commission is also seeking guarantees from Ukraine to maintain oil supplies to the EU."
According to Politico and EUrologus, in exchange for Hungary's consent, a declaration will be accepted. According to the latter, the European Commission will approach Ukraine to seek guarantees that oil pipeline transfers to the EU would continue, and the document would indicate Ukraine's international obligation to secure gas supplies to Europe through the pipeline system. (Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested that Azeri gas could be transferred instead of Russian gas.) Portfolio reports that the statement could also contain a previous promise of setting up a high-level task force.
The Council's statement from Monday does not mention the declaration, but states that as long as "illegal actions by the Russian Federation continue to violate fundamental rules of international law, including, in particular, the prohibition on the use of force, it is appropriate to maintain all the measures imposed by the EU and to take additional ones, if necessary". It also recalls that the recent unanimously agreed conclusions of the Heads of State and Government, including Viktor Orbán, in December reconfirmed the European Union’s unwavering commitment to providing continued support, both political and diplomatic – among others – to Ukraine as long as it takes and as intensely as needed.
Tisza: a Council statement is worth nothing; DK: the vehicle must be a wreck
"As expected, the brave warrior in Brussels applied his usual policy of pleasing two audiences and instead of the promised veto, he bravely ran away" – commented Péter Magyar commented on Facebook. According to the Tisza Party president, "the propaganda will explain the new flight by saying that they defended Hungarian interests with a statement. As I sat in ambassadorial meetings in Brussels for seven years, I can tell the prime minister that a Council statement is worth as much as a less delicious coffee in a Brussels buffet. Nothing. So it goes for the mouse who thinks he's an elephant..."
"The vehicle must be quite a wreck if the brake only lasted this long" – posted Csaba Molnár, MEP of the DK party on Facebook. About Orbán, “we know that every time he threatens a veto, he always ends up voting in favour. Because his mouth is big, his talent (in this case, thank God) is tiny. But now something else has happened. Without any shame, they said, almost proudly, that they would do what Trump asked them to do. The government, which has been touting its sovereignty, openly admits that it is casting its vote at the command of a foreign leader. It must be difficult to serve Trump, Putin and the Chinese at the same time. But that should be the traitors' problem.”
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