European foreign ministers urge Hungary to accept embargo on Russian oil

EU foreign ministers have sought to publicly press Hungary today to lift its veto on a proposed oil embargo on Russia, with Lithuania saying the bloc is “being held hostage by a member state”.

The European Commission’s ban on crude imports in early May could be its toughest sanction in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and would include exceptions for EU countries that are more dependent on Russian oil.

Germany, the European Union’s largest economy and the largest buyer of Russian energy, has said it wants an agreement to approve the oil embargo, which it has proposed would last for years.

“I am confident that we will reach an agreement in the coming days,” German Foreign Minister Analena Berbock said on arrival at a meeting with her counterparts. “We have to prepare it extremely well because it has to be sustainable.”

However, Hungary, Moscow’s closest ally in the EU, has said it is seeking hundreds of millions of euros from the Union to mitigate the cost of losing Russian crude. The EU needs all 27 countries to agree on an embargo in order to proceed with sanctions on Russian oil.

“The whole Union is being held hostage by one Member State (…) we have to agree, we can not remain hostage,” said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis as he met at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

Few ministers named Hungary in statements to reporters, but Romania said it was up to the Union to persuade the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The Hungarian prime minister today raised the prospect of a “recession” in Europe, as the continent faces rising energy costs and rising inflation due to the war in Ukraine.

Orban stressed that Budapest would not block European Union sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, as long as they did not pose a threat to Hungary’s energy security.

Earlier in the day, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Budapest had not received any serious proposals from the European Commission to impose an embargo on Russian oil, following a visit by the commission’s president to Budapest earlier this month.

“The European Commission has a problem with a proposal, so it is a fair expectation from Hungary … that the EU should offer a solution: to finance investment and to offset the (resulting) price increases that make a comprehensive “modernization of Hungary’s energy structure to the tune of 15-18 billion euros,” Sigiarto said in a Facebook post.

He added that another solution would be to exclude pipeline oil shipments from the planned embargo.

An oil embargo already imposed by the United States and Britain, which would follow five rounds of previous EU sanctions, is widely seen as the best way to reduce Russian revenue financing Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said before meeting with ministers that he would do his best to break the deadlock over oil sanctions.

Some diplomats are now pointing to a summit on May 30-31 until an agreement is reached on a phased ban on Russian oil, possibly within six months, with a longer transition period for Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

However, EU officials said there were other elements of the sanctions package proposed by the Commission, which some Member States said last week were not ready to support.

These countries included the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Cyprus, with the latter expressing concern over a proposal to ban the sale of real estate to Russians.

SOURCE: AMPE