PM Orbán praised Hungary’s Turkic friends for low energy prices, called Azerbaijan a staunch partner

Hungary’s energy supply is secure thanks to Turkic countries, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said after meeting Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at his office in Budapest on Tuesday.

At a joint press conference with Aliyev, Orbán said households would pay 2-3 times the price of energy if it were not for “our Turkic friends”, noting that the first shipment of natural gas from Azerbaijan arrived in Hungary last year and the country would import similar volumes this year too.

Orbán said Azerbaijan had always been a staunch partner, no matter what difficulties Hungary had faced in recent decades. The prime minister said that at a time when global security “is being tested by challenges”, the value of “reliable partners” meeting to review bilateral ties and assess the international situation should not be underestimated.

For the first time in the history of the Organisation of Turkic States, Hungary is hosting one of its summits, Orbán noted. He said the war in Hungary’s neighbourhood and the related sanctions had cost the economy more than 20 billion euros so far. He said that instead of isolating the conflict, the European Union had chosen to expand it and had backed war over peace, “and this has caused a lot of damage.”

EU economy struggling due to war and sanctions

“The European economy is also in a difficult situation because the war and the sanctions have destroyed the strategic foundations of what had been successful economic growth,” Orbán said, adding that “the ship of the European economy has to be navigated without a compass”, which had led to a continuous energy crisis.

Europeans, he said, were paying 3-4 times as much as Americans for gas and electricity, which had made it impossible to build a competitive economy.

Meanwhile, he said Hungary had fought to be able to maintain energy relations with Russia, to which the Ukrainians had responded by “turning off the Ukrainian pipeline”. “It was after this that we made an agreement with our Turkic friends on supplying Hungary from the south,” he noted.

Hungarian MVM and MOL present in Azerbaijan

The prime minister said Hungary appreciated that Azerbaijan has enabled Hungarian state-owned energy group MVM and oil and gas company MOL to acquire shares in its gas fields and pipelines. Hungary’s stake in Azerbaijan’s oil and gas fields ensures that it has hundreds of millions of cubic metres of gas and hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a year on the international energy market, he added.

• Azerbaijani-Hungarian friendship – Hungarian MOL bought oil fields and pipelines

Hungary and Azerbaijan have also agreed to expand their cooperation to the area of renewable energy, Orbán said. He said his talks with Aliyev had also covered economic matters and the issue of peace, adding that they had always agreed that the war could only be resolved through negotiations.

Orbán congratulated Aliyev on finalising the text of an Azeri-Armenian peace agreement. He said the agreement was a good example of how a war could be resolved through diplomacy, adding that when it came to peace, every bit of success was “hugely important” for Hungary in today’s “turbulent” international situation.

Friendly relations

Aliyev praised the two countries’ friendly relations. He said the fact that Hungary was hosting a summit of the Organisation of Turkic States as an observer country proved its strong ties to its historical roots.

He congratulated Hungary on its achievements, saying it was one of a handful of countries that pursued an independent foreign policy.

Aliyev said Azerbaijan had always appreciated and respected how Orbán had upheld his country’s national interests. He said Hungary had protected its national interests and had joined initiatives that had proven beneficial.

No energy security without cooperation with Turkic states, FM Szijjártó states

Cooperation with the Turkic states enables Hungary to guarantee secure energy supplies and to prevent a doubling of Hungarian families’ utility costs resulting from decisions by Brussels, the minister of foreign affairs and trade said on Tuesday.

The ministry cited Péter Szijjártó as saying before the Budapest summit of the Organisation of Turkic States that the crises of recent years had clearly proved that without the cooperation with the Turkic states Hungary would not have a secure energy supply.

All of this, he said, had vindicated the government’s foreign policy strategy which is aimed at developing increasingly close cooperation with the Turkic states.

“Hungary’s gas supplies are currently almost fully delivered through Turkiye. Large Hungarian energy companies have acquired stakes in crude oil and natural gas fields in Azerbaijan, as a result of which they appear on international energy markets with millions of cubic metres of gas and hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil each year, representing a completely new dimension,” he said.

“Drillings on MOL’s crude oil and natural gas fields in Kazakhstan have been successful and extraction has been started. Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are launching nuclear energy programmes for which they will be using Hungarian technology,” he added.

Szijjártó said that consequently Hungarian-Turkic cooperation represented serious value added in terms of Hungary’s secure energy supplies.

He said that 11-12 years ago the Hungarian government had been “laughed at” in Europe for building relations with Turkic states but by now European leaders were frequent visitors in the region.

“It has become clear that cooperation with the Turkic states is expressly beneficial for the economy and energy security,” Szijjártó said. “We are not starting this only now, we have been developing good cooperation for more than ten years, and it is not only a good cooperation but also a friendship, a strategic alliance from which Hungary has profited much.”

He added that this was the first time that the Organisation of Turkic States was holding its summit in Europe, in a country holding observer status in the organisation.

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