Hungary clings to Russian oil and gas as EU and NATO push to cut...

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : Earlier this year, leaders of the Czech Republic, which previously received about half its oil from Russia via the Druzhba pipeline, celebrated the country's "oil independence day" after doubling the capacity of an Italian pipeline, the last infrastructural development necessary to end Russian oil imports.
54% : "It is quite astonishing that the leaders of European countries ... are unable to see that each country´s geographical location determines where it can purchase energy sources," Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in a September social media post.
53% : " Despite insistence that a lack of infrastructure precludes a transition to non-Russian energy sources, other countries in the region, similarly landlocked, have brought Russian oil first to a trickle, then to a stop.
50% : Tóth, who works at the Regional Centre for Energy Policy Research, an independent institute affiliated with Corvinus University of Budapest, said her group's modeling shows breaking with Russian gas would likely cause "a temporary increase of 1.5 to 2 euros per megawatt hour," a price hike she called "minimal, below 5%." Despite the rhetorical commitment to Russian energy from Hungary's politicians, national energy company MOL has undertaken investments in recent years to diversify its supplies and outfit its refineries in Hungary and Slovakia to process non-Russian crude.
49% : "It is a matter of political will to break away from Russian energy sources.
47% : Yet as the EU sought to deprive Putin of revenue that helps fuel the war, it also granted a temporary exemption for supplies delivered by pipeline to three landlocked countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia.
46% : " Hungary's government has portrayed EU efforts to cease Russian energy imports as an existential threat to a popular, government-backed household utility reduction program.
44% : It's the intention that is missing," Miklós said. EU countries moved quickly to slash their imports of Russian oil and gas after Russia invaded Ukraine, instituting an embargo on Russian oil in 2022 and, this year, announcing a proposal to gradually stop the import of all Russian gas and oil into the bloc by the end of 2027.
44% : Miklós said that despite the Hungarian government's determination to continue purchasing Russian energy, EU regulations will soon bring that to an end.
41% : Hungary and its leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, have long argued Russian energy imports are indispensable for the country's economy and switching to fossil fuels sourced from elsewhere would cause an immediate economic collapse.

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