Hungary and Poland eye more cooperation on energy

The creation of energetic security were the major themes of a Hungarian-Polish presidential meeting held in Veszprem, western Hungary on March 23, 2018.

The themes included the creation of transport corridors and energetic security, as well as the investments related to the 3 Seas Initiative, Hungarian President Janos Ader told reporters after meeting with his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda.

«It is the aim of each European country to ensure its gas & oil purchases from multiple sources. For this purpose, they must create the conditions to build wires, inter-connectors, upgrade wires to become bidirectional, and connect different networks», Ader said.

Poland has made a big step in this direction by building an LNG terminal in the north, Ader said, adding that it would be great if the LNG terminal was also to be built in Croatia, but the works there have not yet been started. «Strengthening the security of nations in the field of energy is also important, and it would be good to use both the existing infrastructure and build new ones», Duda underlined.

If Croatia were to realize a similar investment as the gasport already working in the northern Polish city of Swinoujscie, it would enable the construction of a North-South gas corridor, Duda added, pointing to the fact that the increase of energetic safety was a regional matter of the utmost important, and its proper operations needed inter-connectors to be set up between Poland and the Czech Republic and between Poland and Slovakia as well.

Regarding the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, Ader said that the Hungarian position did not change. Hungary wanted a decision that was in line with EU rules, and met the requirements of energy security, did not apply double standards, and served the member states’ interests in energetic security.