TIBOR ILLYES/EPA
The leader and candidate for prime minister of the Hungarian opposition party Tisza, Peter Magyar.
Resumption of supply through the Druzhba pipeline is a fundamental condition for lifting Budapest’s veto on the European Union’s 90 billion euro loan to Ukraine, Magyar confirmed this Monday.
The next Prime Minister of Hungary, Péter Hungarianconditioned, this Monday, the removal of Budapest’s veto on the European Union’s 90 billion euro loan to Ukraine on resumption of supply through the Druzhba pipeline(Friendship, translating from Russian).
The rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) hopes to approve, on Wednesday, the last step to implement the loan, which has been blocked by Hungary, until now led by the ultra-conservative Viktor Orbán, due to a parallel dispute over the transit of Russian oil through the same pipeline.
Magyar, whose party, Tisza, won the Hungarian legislative elections on the 12th with a two-thirds majority, did not want to give many details about the meeting with a European Commission mission last week, in the first contact between Budapest and Brussels, only indicating that the atmosphere was “good and constructive”.
In an extensive press conference, according to the Spanish agency Europa Press, Magyar said that the European delegation offered help to Hungary in pending processes in the European political arena, such as the 17 billion euros frozen by Orbán’s authoritarian drift.
Regarding the loan of 90,000 million to keep Ukraine afloat in the face of the war effort due to the Russian invasion, Magyar indicated that Hungary will withdraw its veto if supplies are resumed through the Polish Druzhba pipeline, the most important artery for transporting Russian oil to Central Europe and which has been out of operation since the end of January due to a Russian attack on a section in Ukraine.
A week ago, at a press conference with Hungarian and foreign journalists, Magyar was asked three times about the Hungarian veto on the loan to Kiev, which the EU approved last December, but he always declined to answer directly, stating only that he would speak to the leaders of the European bloc.
Heavily dependent on Russian oil, Hungary accused Ukraine of delaying pipeline repairs. Last week, during a visit to Berlin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky promised that the Druzhba pipeline will be repaired by the end of April. A part of the pipeline, which runs through western Ukraine, was damaged in January by an airstrike from Moscow.
