Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó have reacted strongly to Bulgaria’s decision to introduce new, huge transit fees of €10.2 per MW/h of natural gas passing through the Bulgarian extension of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline to Western Europe – the so-called “Balkan Stream”.
I suspect this is coordinated with the rest of the EU.
Hungary and Serbia were notoriously not cooperating with the sanctions regime, so this is probably the alternative legal solution.
Is it really “not cooperating” if you’re just not in the block in the first place?
They’re taking a few billion in aid from the EU on their path to joining so I think cooperating is a good term here.
BlockblocUnfortunately for the EU, Hungary is part of of block.
Regarding Serbia, if you’re applying, you should behave like a perfect member. Croatia and Estonia are notoriously known to have implemented EU directive as candidates, before the directive were even voted.
Yeah, applied 15 years ago, with the current status of “in a decade, maybe”. It’s just funny how after 4 years of “no more enlargement, EU’s full, structural reform first” suddenly everyone’s pretending like Serbia was on the cusp of membership instead of basically being Turkey 2.