Ambassadors of European Union (EU) countries on Monday made a last-ditch effort to persuade Hungary to accept an embargo on Russian oil, just hours before a summit that could reveal cracks in the bloc.
Russia’s proposed oil embargo is part of the EU’s sixth package of sanctions, but faces opposition from Hungary, which justifies its stance on the grounds that such a measure would pose a threat to energy security.
EU ambassadors held an extraordinary meeting in Brussels on Sunday to try to pave the way for a deal that would allow the ratification of the sixth package of sanctions against Russia, and the meeting continues on Monday if no consensus is reached.
Starting in the afternoon, European leaders will begin a two-day summit in the Belgian capital to discuss ways to help Ukraine in the face of Russian invasion and how to increase defense spending.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky plans to attend the meeting with his European counterparts via videoconference.
In this scenario, the issue of the sixth sanctions package and the proposed oil embargo is the “elephant in the room” as one EU diplomat puts it.
Faced with the enormous challenge of reaching a compromise, the EU wants at all costs to avoid showing its internal divisions and is therefore looking for a way out.
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Landlocked Hungary imports 65% of the oil it consumes from Russia via the Druzhba pipeline and has requested an exception to the import ban, along with Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Diplomats said the embargo on the countries in question was delayed by two years, but Budapest wants at least four years and around 800m euros in European funding to modernize its refineries.
An EU official told AFP that the latest compromise solution would keep the Druzhba pipeline out of the embargo “for now” and impose sanctions only on oil sent to the EU via tankers.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban made it clear that he wanted the oil embargo to be discussed at the summit by sending a letter to Charles Michel, President of the European Council, following his recent re-election.
Also, due to the differences between Brussels and Budapest over democracy and the rule of law in that country, the EU has yet to approve Hungary’s post-pandemic recovery plan.
Still hoping for a solution, EU officials are trying to insist that the problem is technical, not about the political differences between Orban and his EU partners.
But one EU diplomat warned that suspicions that negotiators had gone too far in their efforts to appease Orban tested anger.
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source: Noticias
