The EU Commission has not intervened against a July 17 Ukrainian ban on Russian oil transits to neighboring Slovakia and Hungary, with EU Commission spokesman Olof Gill only saying the EU was “continuing to gather information.” Its formalistic attitude, that included a warning to Hungary and Slovakia against any unilateral retaliatory measures such as cutting off electricity supplies to Kyiv, prompted a harsh response by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto: Since Hungary’s ultimatum on July 25, “More than a week has passed, but the European Commission has done nothing. There are only two scenarios. The European Commission is either too weak to make the candidate country (Ukraine) respect the fundamental interests of the two EU member states, or this whole thing was invented, not in Kyiv, but in Brussels, and not the Ukrainian government, but the European Commission wants to blackmail the two countries standing for peace,” Szijjarto wrote on his Facebook page.
“The European Commission and personally [EU Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen must immediately give an answer whether it was they who instructed Kyiv to block oil supplies. And if not, why the European Commission did not take any action within a week,” the Foreign Minister added. Szijjarto reiterated that the suspension of the transit of Russian oil undermined the energy security of the two EU states and was a direct violation of Kyiv’s association agreement with the EU.
