No Fuel Shortage: EU Accuses Hungary and Slovakia of Trying to Benefit from Cheap Russian Oil Despite Alternatives

Ukraine's sanctions on Russian oil are not hindering energy flows to Hungary, Brussels said on Monday, refuting Budapest's claims of an imminent fuel shortage.

The day before, the European Commission, the EU's executive body, said Hungary was still receiving the same amount of fuel as before the penalties, calling on both it and Slovakia to provide more information if they want to receive EU assistance. 

‘So far, we have not seen any reduction in oil flows to Hungary after the introduction of the Ukrainian sanctions,’ Olof Gill, a European Commission trade representative, told POLITICO in response to a request.

Hungary has warned for weeks of a looming ‘energy crisis’ after Ukraine's recently imposed sanctions blocked Russian energy giant Lukoil's products from passing through its territory. Slovakia also claimed that it would soon ‘face a shortage’.

This contrived ‘oil dispute’ has been going on since June, when Ukraine imposed sanctions on Lukoil. A few weeks later, Hungary and Slovakia, which still import Russian oil under EU sanctions imposed on landlocked countries, demanded that the EU intervene and force Ukraine to lift the sanctions and back down.

However, other EU members said that the two countries were exaggerating the potential impact of the sanctions, and that the sanctions exemption allowing them to buy Russian oil was always intended to be temporary.

Despite the ongoing Russian war in neighbouring Ukraine for the third year in a row, Hungary has actually increased its imports of cheap Russian fuel and signed new gas deals with Russia.

The Commission therefore requested more information from Budapest and Bratislava on the nature of their problems.

‘The responses to the questions are, in our assessment, incomplete and insufficiently detailed so far,’ said Hill. ‘More detailed answers are still needed to complete the Commission's analysis... and further analysis is still needed to assess the need for any specific Commission action.’

Speaking last week, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó baselessly claimed that Ukraine was threatening his country's energy security and delaying a third of the supplies it intends to import. Budapest has not provided any evidence of the disruption of supplies.

Hungary, which enjoys some of the lowest fuel prices on the continent even as its neighbours seek to wean themselves off Russia, has proposed a deal under which a Hungarian firm would take ownership of the oil before it reaches Ukraine, potentially allowing it to circumvent Lukoil sanctions and resolve the stand-off.