VIENNA, May 6. /TASS/. The Hungarian government will not allow the embargo on Russian oil supplies to come into effect in the form which is now proposed by the European Commission, Friday by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Economic Relations of Hungary, Peter Szijjarto, said on Friday.
He was commenting on the preparation of the sixth package of sanctions against Russia.
The entry into force of this proposal "will undermine the security of Hungary's energy supply, and through it, the entire Hungarian economy," Szijjarto said as quoted by the MIT news agency.
"Of course, we will not allow this, because we cannot allow anyone to destroy the results of the many years of efforts of the Hungarian people," said Szijjarto, speaking at the Pata Jozsef Mechanical Engineering plant in the Bacs-Kiskun region in the south of the country. He stressed that the Hungarian government will not rest down until "until the plan of Brussels, which provides for an embargo on Russian oil, fails."
Earlier on Friday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told the Kossuth radio station that a ban on Russian oil supplies would be equal to an atomic bomb hitting the country's economy. According to him, this is still a "red line" for Budapest.
The Hungarian government has repeatedly explained that the only large Danube oil refinery in the country is technologically geared in such a way that at least 65% of crude should come from Russia. Zsolt Hernadi, CEO of the MOL company that manages this enterprise, noted that it would take two to four years and several hundred million dollars to restructure the production process and switch to other raw materials (with a different sulfur content, density, etc.). Nevertheless, MOL has recently been forced to work out such a scenario.