Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD) spoke on the phone with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Saturday. They called on the European Union (EU) and especially the European Commission (EC) to renew the dialogue with Russia and cancel the sanctions regarding Russian energy raw materials, writes TASR.
- Robert Fico and Viktor Orbán jointly request to renew Europe’s dialogue with Russia.
- Fico calls for the lifting of sanctions limiting the import of Russian gas and oil.
“The EU and especially the EC should immediately resume dialogue with Russia and ensure such a political and legal environment that individual member countries and the EU as a whole supplemented the missing gas and oil reserves and enabled the supply of these strategic raw materials from all possible sources and directions, including Russia,” wrote Fico in a post on the social network.
“Therefore, senseless sanctions prohibiting the import of gas and oil from Russia should be lifted, an independent EU initiative should be launched for accelerated the end of the war in Ukraine and decisive steps taken to restore the operation of the Druzhba pipeline,” he added.
According to Fico, the phone call with Orbán confirmed that we cannot fight the huge energy crisis only at the national level. “Nevertheless, the governments of the Slovak Republic and Hungary are doing everything to protect the national economies and their citizens from the ideological blindness and incompetence of the European Commission, the malicious Ukrainian president and the effects of the war against Iran,” wrote the head of the Slovak government.
After a telephone conversation with Fico, Orbán stated in the same spirit that “Brussels should immediately suspend sanctions and restrictions on Russian energy”. According to him, the situation is critical and “every day we are getting closer to a serious energy crisis”. According to Orbán, the European economy is directly threatened by the lack of energy raw materials and the rise in prices, which could only be avoided if the European Union replenished its oil and gas reserves “from all possible sources, in the largest possible volume and as quickly as possible.”
“Every day counts,” the Hungarian prime minister continued, and then called on the EU to “force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to immediately reopen the Druzhba pipeline.” He also called on the European Union to abandon plans to cut itself off from Russian energy and switch to “a more expensive Brussels energy policy that would be unaffordable for families”.
