Hungary accuses EU of blackmail over blocked oil supplies
BUDAPEST, July 30 (Reuters) -Hungary's foreign minister on Tuesday accused the European Commission of blackmail in a dispute over blocked oil supplies to Hungary and Slovakia - two countries that have been critical of the European Union's arming of Ukraine.
Ukraine put Russia's Lukoil <LKOH.MM > on a sanctions list in June, stopping supplies running through Ukraine to Hungarian and Slovak refiners owned by Hungarian oil and gas group MOL MOLB.BU.
Hungary and Slovakia last week asked the Commission to put pressure on Kiev to reverse the decision.
"More than a week has passed and the European Commission has done nothing," Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Facebook on Tuesday.
"Despite the threat to the energy security of two EU Member States, despite the crystal-clear violation of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, Brussels remains silent," he added, referring to a deal over Kyiv's possible eventual EU entry.
Szijjarto said the Commission was either "so weak that it is incapable of asserting the fundamental interests" of member states, or that it might have manufactured the dispute itself.
It was maybe "Brussels, not Kyiv, that invented the whole thing; it was the European Commission, not the Ukrainian government, that wanted to blackmail two pro-peace countries that reject arms transfers."
The Commission said in a written response that on receiving the requests from Hungary and Slovakia it began gathering information.
"The Commission has addressed detailed questions to Slovakia and Hungary to establish a complete analysis and reached out to Ukrainian authorities," it said.
"These questions relate to volumes of the current oil transit, legal entities shipping the oil through Ukraine and contracts in place, possibilities for alternative routes of supply as well as the cost of it."
Flows from other Russian suppliers have not been impacted.
In the deepening dispute, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Monday his country would halt diesel supplies to Ukraine if Kyiv failed to restore flows.
The dispute has shown how much some EU countries still depend on Russian energy more than two years after the bloc decided to stop oil imports from Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine.
Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have exemptions to the ban on Russia pipeline oil imports to give them time to find alternatives.
Reporting by Boldizsar Gyori
Editing by Jason Hovet and Mark Potter
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