Hungary has demanded that shipments of Russian oil via pipelines should be exempted from the EU’s proposed ban, as Budapest continues to resist the current round of sanctions.
Péter Szijjártó, the country’s foreign minister, said the embargo should be limited to seaborne shipments, excluding the pipeline that the landlocked country relies on to obtain flows of oil from Russia.
Hungary has been the main opponent of the plan, which requires the unanimous consent of the bloc’s 27 member states. It was unveiled by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen a week ago as she seeks to strip Russia of one of its main sources of hard currency income amid the war in Ukraine.