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“Today we have decided to turn off the tap on Russian energy,” the Danish commissioner declared.
Not everyone is on board with that mission, however. The bloc’s two most Kremlin-friendly countries, Hungary and Slovakia, have already vowed to oppose the move, which they claim will lead to higher prices at home.
“Hungarian families will have to pay twice, three times, or even four times as much as they have been paying for utility bills so far,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó claimed in an interview broadcast the same day.
Brussels isn’t convinced and is pushing on regardless, said three officials granted anonymity to speak frankly about the spat. “We don’t recognize the sums the Hungarians and Slovaks are showing us when they say this threatens their energy security,” one official said. A second insisted that Bratislava and Budapest were just looking for a cash handout in return for their support.
Despite the broadside, the gas plan does introduce certain cir***stances under which Russian gas could still be imported until Jan. 1, 2028, including the energy security situation in landlocked countries. The Commission, Jørgensen told POLITICO, “is doing everything it can to help find alternatives to Russian gas.” He added that “no member state will be left without energy as a result of this proposal.”
The latest measures have been designed to be pblocked by a qualified majority of member countries as trade and energy policy, stripping Hungary’s hard-right Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s populist leader Robert Fico of their vetoes. But imposing new sanctions and rolling over existing ones requires the unanimous support of all 27 EU members, and the pair have hinted they could blow up those restrictions if they aren’t given further exemptions.
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