Democracy Digest: Oil on Troubled Waters

In early March, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki condemned Russian energy imports, saying it was not only gas "but also the blood of innocent people" that was pouring through Russian pipelines to the West.

In late April, Gazprom cut off gas supplies to Poland, most likely in retaliation for Warsaw's strong anti-Russian line, including imposing sanctions on the Russian energy company itself. Poland shrugged off the move, arguing it would manage fine without Russian supplies, especially given it had already been making plans to become independent of Russian gas by the end of 2022 anyway.

Faced with the prospect of an imports ban on Russian oil, Poland's majority state-owned oil company PKN Orlen said it could replace Russia as the main oil supplier for the entire Central and Eastern European region. The company declared it had not made spot purchases of oil from Russia anyway since the war started and it was intensively testing alternatives.

However, Hungary and, less typically, Slovakia, are against the latest sanctions plan by the Commission, which has proposed an exemption to give the two countries an extra year to implement the ban.

That may still not be enough for Hungary. "In this form, the embargo on Russian oil is not acceptable for Hungary, because it would ruin our energy security," Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said in a Facebook post.

He added it is not a question of political will, or intention, but quite simply "a physical, geographical and infrastructural reality."

The Hungarian government has long been critical of any EU sanctions targeting the Russian energy sector. It had reckoned that as long as Europe's economic powerhouse, Germany, opposed an embargo on Russian...