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Central Europe
September 21, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 10
Orban has sought to diversify his country's gas imports, and two-way interconnectors with Slovakia, Croatia, and Romania were established in recent years. Orban himself declared that the interconnector allowing deliveries of some 4bn cm of gas from Romania will end the era of Russia's
gas monopoly in Hungary from 2021 or 2022.
The government also began talks on the price
of gas to be supplied from the Croatian LNG terminal in Krk, once it is completed in the second half of 2020.
Poland reportedly breaks EU unity over Brexit
bne IntelliNews
Poland is reported to have broken the unity of the European Union member states over Brexit, poten- tially heightening the difficulty of the bloc’s negotia- tions with the UK, as they are about to enter crucial stages in the coming weeks.
Poland’s European Affairs Minister Konrad Szy- manski told his EU peers earlier this week that Brussels might need to change its negotiating strategy if there is no clear progress on the Brexit deal next month, Politico Europe reported.
Szymanski’s idea reportedly did not gain traction from anyone else at the general affairs meeting of the European Council, a gathering of government officials from EU member states, which took place on September 18.
However, it was a hint that Poland – itself a rogue state in the EU because of its multiple conflicts with Brussels – could complicate Brexit. For its part, the UK has been trying to circumvent EU institutions by talking to individual member states
to garner support for a less stringent approach to negotiations.
Poland has long been fond of the UK’s scepticism of the EU, with which Warsaw is at odds over a number of issues, the top one being the judiciary reform being carried out by the populist national- ists from the Law and Justice (PiS) government.
Warsaw may also be willing to give London more leeway in exiting the EU because of an estimated one million Poles currently living in the UK.
Poland’s apparent willingness to break EU ranks over Brexit is going to be put to the test in the com- ing weeks and months, following Brussels’ outright rejection of the UK's Brexit plan, known as the Chequers proposal, on September 20.
That has exacerbated the risk of the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal, which, Poland recently warned, will result in extra costs and other difficul- ties for its businesses working in or with the UK.