PARIS, November 7. /TASS/. Hungary has come under strong US pressure because of energy cooperation with Russia, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in Munich on Friday, according to reports by Agence France-Presse.
“The United States is exerting strong pressure on Hungary fearing Moscow’s rapprochement with Budapest,” Orban said after meeting with Horst Seehofer, the prime minister of Bavaria.
A few days earlier, the Hungarian parliament adopted a law that would make it possible to speed up the construction of the South Stream gas pipeline and would give the green light to companies without licenses to participate in the project.
South Stream is a global infrastructure project launched by the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom to build a gas pipeline with a capacity of 63 billion cubic meters that will transport gas via the Black Sea bed to South and Central Europe. The project’s main purpose is to diversify natural gas exports and exclude transit risks. The South Stream’s surface section is to run through the territories of Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Slovenia and Austria.
In autumn 2013, the European Commission launched an anti-monopoly investigation into the South Stream project, which, in its view, contradicts the provisions of the European Union’s Third Energy Package.
The European Union’s Third Energy Package is a legislative package for an internal gas and electricity market in the European Union. Its purpose is to further open up gas and electricity markets in the European Union. The package was proposed by the European Commission in September 2007 and adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union in July 2009. It took effect on September 3, 2009.