Hungary rejects any political pressure in the field of energy security, and the European Union must return to common sense in order to tackle the crisis, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said in Bucharest on Wednesday.
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The minister noted at a panel discussion at this year’s Romanian International Gas Conference that the government views energy supply as a matter of physical reality, and rejects any approach that would put it in a political or ideological context. He pointed out that the direction of gas purchases is one hundred percent determined by infrastructure, and is in no way a political statement.
“The issue of energy supply is currently over-politicized and over-ideologized in Europe,” he stressed, adding that certain measures violate the sovereign right of Member States to set their own national energy mix. In this context, he called it dangerous and unreasonable to ban any energy source from the continent.
Péter Szijjártó highlighted that the only way for Europe to successfully deal with the energy crisis is to return to rationality, and to restore the sovereign right of Member States to set their national energy mix and not to exclude any source.
He emphasized that Hungary is under constant pressure to speed up diversification, which in the government’s vocabulary means bringing in as many energy sources as possible, not replacing one reliable supplier with another.
However, the biggest obstacle to diversification is Brussels itself and some Member States,” the politician stressed.
To back this up, he said that buying large quantities of gas for Hungary would now be possible from Azerbaijan, Qatar, and Turkey in particular, but that the energy infrastructure capacity in southeastern Europe is not sufficient and without expansion diversification remains “a mere illusion.”
Péter Szijjártó attended the ministerial-level meeting of the Organization of Turkic States on economic and trade issues.Continue reading
The foreign minister warned that energy security would be jeopardized if the purchase of natural gas was turned into a political issue. “We have to remember that we cannot heat our homes with press releases and political statements, we need natural gas,” he argued.
Therefore we reject any political pressure to secure our energy supply,” he stressed.
He said that Hungary is heavily dependent on source and transit countries and has therefore interconnected its energy networks with six of its seven neighbors to secure supplies, but that even in the current situation, it is still inconceivable to supply gas without Russian sources, so the link must be maintained.
He sharply criticized Bulgaria’s increase in the cost of Russian gas transit, which he said jeopardized the security of supply of Hungary and Serbia, and added that the oft-mentioned slogan of European solidarity should be taken seriously.
Finally, Szijjártó also touched on nuclear energy, against which, he said, there was a “fierce ideological attack” in Europe. He underlined that nuclear energy is the only way to produce electricity today in large quantities, safely, cheaply, and sustainably.
Government Rejects Political Pressure to Secure Energy Supplies, Says Minister (hungarytoday.hu)
