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Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó claimed that Croatia is not a reliable transit country, after Zagreb offered help to deliver oil to Hungary and Slovakia. / kormany.hu
Hungary’s rude rejection of Croatia’s oil transit offer angers Zagreb
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Croatian officials have responded angrily to Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó’s accusation that Croatia is not a reliable transit country after Zagreb offered its pipeline infrastructure to transport oil to refineries in Hungary and Slovakia.
There are concerns in the two countries about the impact on oil deliveries via the Druzhba pipeline after the Ukrainian ban on Russian oil major Lukoil using the pipeline, announced in July. Since then, both Budapest and Bratislava have been urgently seeking alternatives, while also appealing to officials in Brussels for help to resolve the crisis.
However, a proposal from Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on August 1 to assist was swiftly – and insultingly – rejected by Szijjártó, while Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar also expressed doubts about the offer.
Plenkovic stepped in after Slovakia and Hungary requested the European Commission's intervention, citing threats to their energy security due to Ukrainian sanctions against Lukoil, which they said had disrupted traditional supply routes.
In response, Szijjártó explicitly criticised Croatia's reliability.
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“Based on our experience so far, Croatia is not a reliable transit country for us, because after the outbreak of the war [in Ukraine], the Croats raised the transit fee many times more than the European market averages, they did not allow long-term capacity transfers and it is not clear that exactly how much crude oil the pipeline that passes through them can deliver,” Szijjártó wrote on Facebook on August 2 following a meeting with Vice- President of the European Commission Valdis Dombrovskis.
Blanar questioned Croatia's offer for lacking specifics. “But for what price? What capacity? No one knows that today,” he said, reported Reuters.
Szijjártó’s statement sparked anger in Zagreb. Croatia's Foreign Minister, Gordan Grlić Radman, labelled Szijjártó's remarks “politically deeply offensive”, a government statement said.
“We are unpleasantly surprised by the statement of [Hungarian] Minister Peter Szijjártó, in which he characterised #[Croatia] as an unreliable transit country.
“Such and similar statements have no factual basis; these are completely untrue and hasty claims,” the minister wrote on X.