EU divisions may doom Russia oil ban

Plan for bloc-wide phaseout teeters on resistance from Hungary, Slovakia

A proposal by the European Commission on Wednesday to gradually phase out Russian oil imports might meet its Waterloo after Hungary and Slovakia said that they could not support the plan.

Unanimity among the European Union’s 27 members is required under the EU rules for any such proposal to become a reality.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday unveiled the proposal to impose an EU-wide ban on Russian oil imports, including giving member states up to six months to phase out purchases of Russian crude and until the end of this year to import Russian refined oil products.

“Let us be clear: it will not be easy. Some member states are strongly dependent on Russian oil. But we simply have to work on it,” von der Leyen told the European Parliament in Strasbourg as she sought support for the sixth round of EU sanctions on Russia.

“We maximize pressure on Russia, while at the same time minimizing collateral damage to us and our partners around the globe.”

The new sanctions also include removing Sberbank, the largest Russian bank, and two other major banks from the SWIFT international payments system, and banning three big Russian state-owned broadcasters from EU airwaves.

Hungary, which depends heavily on Russian oil, has continued to express reservations on the EU moves against Russia’s energy sector, saying on Wednesday that it saw no guarantee for its energy security in the EU proposal.

“We don’t see any plan or guarantee on how even a transition could be managed on the basis of the current proposals,” the government press office told AFP.

This is despite the fact that the European Commission proposal asks that Hungary and Slovakia be given more time to meet the embargo target.

The Hungarian government did not say if it meant that Hungary will veto the EU proposal.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Wednesday that his country cannot support the Russian oil ban in the proposal’s current form. He said that stopping Russian oil imports would destroy Hungary’s energy security.

About 65 percent of Hungary’s oil and 85 percent of its gas supplies come from Russia.

Slovakia also warned that it would not be able to agree on the current proposal and urged that more time be granted for the country to find alternative fuel supplies.

Karol Galek, Slovakia’s deputy economy minister in charge of energy policy, told the Politico news website that Slovakia is not opposed to the sanctions and wants to agree to measures that put pressure on Russia. But he said the commission’s proposal to give Slovakia and Hungary an extra year to adapt to the oil embargo is not enough. “We are expecting at least three years,” he said.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries warned earlier that a ban on Russian oil would cause a market disruption like the energy crisis in the 1970s, which prompted a long and painful period of stagflation in the West.

“We could potentially see the loss of more than 7 million barrels per day of Russian oil and other liquids exports,” OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo said in a meeting with EU officials last month.

The EU is the largest buyer of Russian oil, with purchases of more than 73 billion euros ($77.5 billion) in 2021.