Belgium, (Brussels Morning Newspaper) Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced on Friday that the country will be exempt from any EU gas price caps.
He noted that attendants of the EU summit in Brussels agreed to exempt long-term natural gas supply agreements from any bloc-wide price caps, according to Reuters reporting on Friday.
“We got an exemption from the gas price cap so that will not jeopardise Hungary’s security of gas supply,” he posted on Facebook. Orbán concluded that planned joint procurement of natural gas would “not be mandatory for Hungary.”
Speaking on Thursday, Orbán’s Political Director Balázs Orbán, not related to the PM, stressed that the EU would have to exempt Hungary from any gas price caps.
“It will simply not work,” he noted and warned that the move would result in less gas in the EU at higher price, which is the opposite of the intended purpose.
“For Hungary this is not acceptable because the Russians already said very clearly that if it happens they will not send any more gas to Hungary, which from an energy security perspective would be unacceptable to us,” Orbán pointed out.
He reiterated that any EU-wide price caps would have to exclude Hungary, reminding that the same happened with oil.
Hungary’s position
Hungary is a landlocked Central European country dependent on Russian energy imports via pipelines, which is why it was exempt from the planned embargo on Russian oil imports earlier this year.
The Hungarian forint has dropped to record-low level against the euro as the Hungarian National Bank (MNB) decided in September against continuing to up interest rates in the face of 20-percent inflation.
The MNB reversed the decision earlier this month and resumed the rate hike, with Orbán pointing out that the government has full confidence in MNB head György Matolcsy.
The forint is also under depreciation pressure from the European Commission’s decision to block Hungary’s access to EU funds worth roughly 7.5 billion euro over what the body sees as Budapest’s failure to protect the rule of law and curb corruption.”I think that by mid-November we will fulfil all the requirements of the Commission and I hope we will get the green light” to access EU funds, Orbán concluded.
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