Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in Madrid on June 30, 2022, on the occasion of a NATO summit (AFP/Archives/GABRIEL BOUYS)
The European Union “shot itself in the lungs” with sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday, calling on EU leaders to change their policy in this regard.
“At first I thought we just shot ourselves in the foot, but the European economy has shot itself in the lungs and is asphyxiated,” Orban said in a radio address. national.
“There are countries engaged in the policy of sanctions but Brussels must admit that it was a mistake, that (the sanctions) did not achieve their goal, and that they even had the opposite effect”, a- he added.
Mr. Orban was a staunch opponent of the embargo on most Russian oil decreed in early June by the EU in its sixth package of sanctions against Russia. These sanctions concern two-thirds of Russian oil transported by ship. The EU had made a concession to Mr Orban by exempting the oil transported by pipeline on which Hungary depends.
“Brussels believed that the sanctions policy would penalize the Russians, but it penalizes us even more,” said the head of the Hungarian government.
Ukraine criticized Orban’s view, pointing out that the sanctions were imposed in response to Russian aggression.
“Sanctions make it possible to hold the aggressor state accountable for its crimes, and also to weaken its ability to continue the war,” said Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko.
“It is not the sanctions that are killing the European economy, but the hybrid war (which Russia is waging),” he wrote on social networks.
Hungary, which imports 65% of its oil and 80% of its gas, announced on Wednesday a “state of emergency” to respond to the energy crisis.
The measures provide in particular that individuals consuming more gas and electricity than the average will have to pay the surplus at the market price and not at the regulated tariff.
“We are obliged to charge a higher price, because otherwise the system is no longer viable”, explained Mr. Orban in his intervention on the radio.
Russia for its part has sharply reduced gas deliveries while the Russian gas company Gazprom said on Wednesday that it could not guarantee the proper functioning of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, which supplies Europe and which is at a standstill, saying it is in the impossibility of confirming that it will recover a German turbine repaired in Canada.
© 2022 AFP
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