Hungary – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced on Saturday, 17 December, that his country will take part in the construction of the world’s longest undersea power line across the Black Sea and into the Caspian Sea, in cooperation with Romania, Georgia and Azerbaijan.
The announcement followed a summit at the Cotroceni Palace in Bucharest, Romania, attended by Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. It was during that summit that an agreement on this common energy project was signed.
Under the agreement, an undersea electrical connector will be built that will become a new source of energy for the European Union. The 1100-kilometre-long power line, with a capacity of 1 GW, will run under the Black Sea and link Azerbaijan to Hungary via Georgia and Romania. Within three to four years, Azerbaijan will thus be able to export to Europe the electricity produced by its offshore wind farms located in the Caspian Sea. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán praised “a green and cheap energy” which, for the European Union, is a new opportunity to “diversify [its] energy supplies and increase [its] energy security”, in line with the block’s efforts to reduce its energy dependence on Russia as much as possible.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó indicated that the European Commission would support the project with a contribution of 2.3 billion euros.
