PM Orbán disputes US Secretary Marco Rubio’s statement regarding Hungary’s sanctions waiver

The agreement on Hungary’s exemption from the United States’ sanctions on Russian energy is dependent on the top players involved, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview to public radio on Friday, emphasising that the deal was a non-partisan one, and that even those who did not vote for the current government benefitted from it.

Orbán: Exemption from US sanctions tied to people at the top

Asked how long the exemption from the sanctions would remain in effect after the US secretary of state suggested that Hungary had a one-year exemption, Orbán said: “It’s the word of whoever is at the top that counts, and the president is at the top.” As long as Donald Trump is the US president and Hungary had a patriotic government the regulated utility price scheme would remain in effect, he added.

If any of these factors changed and a new situation emerged, “the utility price caps are done”, he said, emphasising that the exemptions were “dependent on the individuals” involved. “The bureaucrats will write whatever they write — it doesn’t matter.” Orbán said that without the agreement, the utility bills of Hungarian families would have tripled from the end of November, and the per-litre price of petrol would have risen to 1,000 forints (EUR 2.60).

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“This is good news for all Hungarians. I said back in 2022 that even those who don’t vote for us will benefit from us being in power,” he said, adding there was “no room for partisan debate in this matter”.

Hungary not paying for US sanctions exemption

Hungary has not paid “a single penny” for the exemption from US sanctions, Orbán said in an interview to public radio on Friday. “We have not paid a penny for this exemption because the President of the US likes Hungarians,” Orbán said. Since Hungarian energy imports form a tiny part of Russian exports, “they have no weight in disciplining Russia,” he said.

Orbán said he generally concluded agreements that were beneficial for the Hungarian economy “both as a package and in their individual parts”, and this was the case here, too. The first agreement on buying LNG from the US was signed five years ago, Orban said. The more sources Hungary has for receiving gas and oil, the more secure its supplies are, he said.

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He noted that Hungary has built many pipeline interconnectors. “For example, we have built the Slovak-Hungarian interconnector, without which we would be in much bigger trouble today,” he said. “Today, Hungary is a country which, while buying the majority of its gas and oil from Russia, has secondary, complementary options which provide security,” he said.

US financial shield unlike IMF loan

Orbán contrasted a financial shield the United States has offered Hungary, as “assistance for countries on friendly terms”, with an International Monetary Fund loan drawn by the former left-wing government that came with “serious economic consequences for Hungarians” in a weekly interview with public radio on Friday.

Orbán dismissed suggestions by the opposition that the financial shield, agreed on at talks in Washington DC a week earlier, was similar to Hungary’s IMF loan taken out in 2008. While the IMF loan came with conditions, such as the elimination of the “13th month” pension and wage supplements, Orban said the financial shield comprised 4-5 government and central bank tools, with international precedents, that could help countries on friendly terms if they got into trouble.