After failing to reduce their reliance on Moscow for energy, Hungary and Slovakia now want help from Brussels.

You reap what you sow.

Privately, that’s the exasperated sentiment among EU diplomats as Hungary joins with Slovakia to try and leverage EU rules to preserve access to a discounted product nearly everyone else has had to shun: Russian oil.

Their maneuvering comes in the wake of Ukrainian sanctions blocking the transit of pipeline crude sold by Russia’s largest private oil firm, Lukoil, which could strip the two countries of a third of their oil imports.

Hungary and Slovakia have gone to the rule book, arguing the penalties violate a 2014 trade deal between Kyiv and the EU and asking the European Commission, the EU’s executive, to intervene.

  • RubberDuck@lemmy.world
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    4 个月前

    And this is the time that Hungary really needs something… and every other country in the EU with a grievance can just block, and block, and block… one after the other. Each citing the rule that supercedes all other rules… “Fuck Around, Find Out”.

    Hungary has shown itself to be a bad faith actor, no need to try and get them to play ball. Cause the first moment they are not dependent, they will just revert to the current form.