“We talk about energy sovereignty in Europe, but in reality we have done nothing more than replace one dependency with another.” This striking assessment was voiced by Zsolt Hernádi, CEO of MOL Nyrt., at a professional conference in Budapest.
Energy sovereignty, he said, is a declared political objective that stands in sharp contrast to reality: only 3% of the oil and 5% of the natural gas consumed in the EU come from domestic sources. EU leaders decided, for political reasons, to reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels. In practice, however, Russians were merely replaced by Americans, as U.S. LNG exports to Europe have doubled since 2022.
The head of Hungary’s largest company does not see the EU’s ongoing decarbonisation as the result of genuine structural change. Exploding gas prices during the Covid pandemic completely reshaped the energy market, he said. The shift to renewables has created a new form of dependency, as China dominates the global market for solar technology much as it does for batteries. “China has done the exact opposite of the EU. It is stockpiling energy reserves and acquiring available capacities worldwide. That is real development: sovereignty is strengthened and import dependence reduced,” Hernádi said.
He argued that China’s drive for sovereignty is what has made the country “green”, with falling emissions merely a by-product of this policy. By contrast, the EU’s energy policy has systematically narrowed its own room for manoeuvre and is rapidly losing global competitiveness without achieving strategic autonomy. According to Hernádi, China is teaching Europe to work with incentives rather than bans, as this approach is far more effective.
The MOL CEO once again argued in favour of maintaining energy relations with Russia, which he said is of immense importance for landlocked Hungary — something countries with access to the sea cannot properly assess. Hungary is well connected in terms of gas infrastructure, with pipelines to all neighbouring countries except Slovenia. In the case of oil, however, dependence on Croatia has been viewed as critical since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Hernádi claimed that Russian gas currently flows to Hungary both from Austria and from the south via TurkStream.
Artificial intelligence was used for the translation of parts of the original German text.
