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SZIJJÁRTÓ: HUNGARY REJECTS PRESSURE ON ENERGY

Hungary rejects all attempts at political pressure regarding energy supplies, and calls on the European Union to return to common sense to handle the crisis, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in Bucharest on Wednesday.
 

Szijjártó told a panel discussion at the 6th Romanian International Gas Conference that Hungary saw energy supply as a “physical reality” and rejected all approaches introducing a political or ideological context. The purchase of natural gas is determined “100%” on infrastructure rather than political declarations, he said. “The issue of energy supplies is over-politicised and over-ideologised in Europe,” which often harms member states’ sovereign right to set their own energy mix, he said. Banning any energy resources from Europe is “dangerous and irrational”, he added. Returning to a rational approach would be the bloc’s only chance to handle the crisis successfully, he said. The EU should “not try to override physics, should restore the right of sovereign member states’ to compose their own national energy mix and we should not ban any sources from the continent.” Meanwhile, he said the Hungarian government saw diversification as a process of involving new suppliers rather than replacing one reliable supplier with another.