According to a recent survey from conservative think tank Századvég, some two-thirds of respondents said they were against a ban on Russian energy imports. The pollster pointed out that opinions were broadly divided along political lines. While 59% of the rightist opposition Tisza Party supporters favored a ban “even if that would entail significant energy and fuel price hikes,” a decisive 96% of ruling party affiliates opposed it.

A “sweeping majority” of Fidesz-Christian Democrat alliance supporters backed what Századvég described as “the dominant, pragmatic position” of maintaining trade relations with Russia.

On Thursday, Oct. 2, State Secretary for Energy Gábor Czepek made the familiar argument at a professional forum in Szeged (175 km southeast of Budapest by road) that ceasing energy imports from Russia would harm Hungary’s competitiveness by raising overall energy costs by roughly 20%. He argued that divesting from this fossil fuel would divert resources from the green transition and added that the country does not see gas as the battleground for reducing emissions.

Czepek said Hungary’s economy could not afford to abandon a favorable energy source, despite 15 years of efforts to diversify its energy supply. He emphasized the need for energy policy to be guided by “common sense,” noting that “Ural [Russian] crude is cheaper than Brent [North Sea], gas from the East is cheaper than gas from the West, and two pipelines are better than one.”

At a parliamentary hearing before the economic committee on Thursday, Oct. 9, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó echoed this sentiment almost word for word.

“Two crude pipelines are better than one,” he said in response to questions about a potential cutoff of Russian crude deliveries via the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline, which originates in Samara, near the confluence of the Samara and Volga rivers. He emphasized the importance of diversification, particularly if Croatia’s Adria pipeline is unable to meet the full demand for crude in Hungary and Slovakia. Szijjártó bemoaned that Adria’s operator, Janaf, has raised transit fees to five times the European benchmark since the war in Ukraine began.

‘Enormous Problems’

On Friday, Oct. 10, Janaf suspended deliveries through the Adria to Serbia. That demonstrated that relying on a single pipeline for crude oil deliveries poses “enormous problems” for any country, Szijjártó said.

“It is clear what kind of problems can arise if a country relies on a single crude pipeline, in this case from Croatia,” the minister said, stressing that Hungary must avoid falling into a similar situation, where it would be dependent solely on one crude delivery

The decision by Janaf came into force on Oct. 9, after the United States imposed sanctions on Serbia’s oil company NIS, the country’s biggest oil importer and one of Russia’s last remaining energy assets in Europe, after a series of waivers that had delayed the measures expired. Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić said in a televised speech that, without deliveries, the NIS refinery, which supplies most of Serbia’s oil products, including gasoline and jet fuel, would struggle to operate beyond Saturday, Nov. 1.

Szijjártó said that Serbia could rely on Hungarian oil and gas company MOL to increase deliveries, but emphasized that this could not fully compensate for the loss caused by the Croatian cutoff. The foreign minister did not offer any details about the amount of the planned supply increase or the method of delivery.

“Although our options are limited due to logistical challenges, we are committed to supporting the maintenance of security of supply [in Serbia],” MOL confirmed in a statement.

This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of October 17, 2025.