“We managed to solve the problem of natural gas supplies to Slovakia and Hungary, despite the fact that Ukraine created very serious difficulties for us,” Szijjártó said at the press conference broadcast by news channel M1.
On Jan. 1, Ukraine halted the transport of Russian gas through its territory via pipeline after signaling for months that it would refuse to renew a deal that had allowed the transit until then. This created hardships for countries still dependent on Russian gas, such as Hungary and especially Slovakia, which used the gas domestically and earned transit fees by facilitating onward supply to Austria.
“To ensure reliable gas supplies to Slovakia via Hungary even with the cessation of its transit through Ukraine, we had to increase the capacity of the connecting gas pipeline between our countries,” Szijjártó continued. Accordingly, the capacity was raised by 900 million cubic meters from 2.6 billion cubic meters to 3.5 bcm.
On March 31, Vojtech Ferencz, CEO of Slovakia’s state-owned energy supplier SPP, told reporters that Russia’s Gazprom would significantly escalate natural gas deliveries to Slovakia through the TurkStream pipeline starting in April. Although initial projections suggested the volume would merely double in April, Ferencz noted that additional pipeline capacity would enable a throughput several times greater than what had been supplied over the past two months.
After Ukraine stopped gas transit in January, Gazprom resumed supplies to Slovakia in early February, utilizing volumes previously allocated to Hungary via the TurkStream pipeline, according to SPP. Compared to last year’s record, the volume of natural gas transported through Hungary to Slovakia had increased by 50% between January and March.
On March 26, Szijjártó praised an agreement between the United States and Russia to prohibit attacks on infrastructure supplying energy to Hungary after meetings in Moscow with Russian Deputy Prime Ministers Alexander Novak and Denis Manturov, presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, and Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev.
Meanwhile, the Hungarian government is proceeding with its plans to hold a referendum on Ukraine’s accession to the European Union. State Secretary Balázs Hidvéghi, who is in the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office, said in a video posted on the government’s Facebook page on March 29 that delivery of the “national consultation” on Ukraine’s EU membership would start soon.
According to Hidvéghi, the ballot paper will have a single question: “Do you support Ukraine becoming a member of the European Union? YES/NO.” However, the package will also summarize critical aspects and risks of Ukraine’s accession, which Hidvéghi advised voters to consider carefully before deciding.
Hidvéghi clarified that these will prominently feature risks that Ukraine’s EU accession poses to Hungary. These include financial challenges, such as Hungary having to become a net contributor and the prospect of joint borrowing to facilitate Ukraine’s accelerated accession, as well as agricultural risks, like Hungarian farmers losing their area-based subsidies, as EU funding would instead go to Ukraine’s farm sector.
However, Yevheniia Kravchuk, deputy chair of the Ukrainian Parliament’s Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy, believes that Hungary’s referendum seems more like an attempt to divert its voters’ attention from domestic economic issues.
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of April 4, 2025.
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