Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has urged a rethink of the European Union’s sanctions policy toward Russia, saying the measures are like “shooting oneself in the foot.”
“The sanctions
policy pursued by the West, that is, ourselves, a necessary
consequence of which, has been what the Russians are doing,
causes more harm to us than to Russia,” Reuters quoted Orban
as saying on the radio, he added “in politics, this is called
shooting oneself in the foot.”
Russia is Hungary’s largest trade partner outside of the EU, with
exports worth $3.4 billion in 2013. Also it is highly dependent
on Russian energy. Earlier this year Hungary agreed a $13 billion
deal with Russian power company Rosatom to expand the country’s
only nuclear power plant.
“The EU should not only compensate producers somehow, be they
Polish, Slovak, Hungarian or Greek, who now have to suffer
losses, but the entire sanctions policy should be
reconsidered,” the Hungarian Prime Minister said, saying he
is already looking for support to force through changes.
Despite the negative sentiment on Tuesday, Hungary’s Agriculture
Ministry stressed the Russian embargo won’t significantly affect
the Hungarian economy as the banned products account for less
than a third of Hungarian agricultural exports to Russia, being
only one percent of total national farming exports.
Despite weak growth in the eastern countries of the EU, Hungary,
together with Slovakia and Bulgaria have shown better than
expected figures, with 0.8 percent quarterly expansion according
to Thursday’s preliminary GDP estimates.
On Thursday, Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s Northern
League party, called on Brussels to immediately repeal the
sanctions against Russia.
“Only fools, Brussels and Rome, could decide to impose
economic sanctions against Russia, which now sends us back tons
of Italian agricultural products worth more than €1
billion,” Salvini wrote on his Facebook page “Who will pay our farmers?
Renzi? Merkel?”
The politician claims that in order to please US President Barack
Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Italian Prime
Minister Matteo Renzi has “ruined the economy” of the
country.
At a meeting in Sochi on Friday with Russian President Vladimir
Putin, his Finnish counterpart, Sauli Niinisto, admitted that
Western sanctions against Moscow and the Russian food ban had
made an impact on economic relations between the two countries.
Niinisto called for an urgent resolution to the Ukraine crisis.
Finland is one of the EU states hardest hit by the embargo.
Russian-Finnish trade fell by 8 percent to $8.3 billion in the
first half of 2014, according to a Kremlin fact sheet.
Article source: http://rt.com/business/180564-eu-russia-sanctions-hungary/
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