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Heizer: Countries in Region Need to Co-Operate on Energy Issues
Wednesday 17 February 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, February 17 (TASR) - The energy supply of states in Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe is dependent on only a single provider (Russia) for historical reasons and these countries are currently facing identical challenges, Hungarian Ambassador to Slovakia Antal Heizer said at a press conference in Bratislava on Wednesday.
"We saw in January 2009 that the countries of our region rely on each other. What's more, we can help each other if our respective systems operate properly," said Heizer.
To this end, he added, the EU has launched a number of projects since January 2009, whether they be "constructing interlinks between Slovakia and Hungary, speeding up the planning of the construction of the Nabucco and South Stream gas pipelines, modernising the Adria pipeline or other Czech-Slovak and Polish-Czech projects".
According to Heizer, it's extremely important to convey political willingness from time to time in order for these projects to be carried out. "I for one deem the construction of interlinks to be a most important task, along with strengthening countries' energy security. We've involved some non-EU countries in this process via the Nabucco and South Stream pipelines as well, which is a positive and good outcome," he added.
On February 24, Hungary will organise a summit of the Visegrad Group (V4) countries, focused on energy-security issues, the interconnection of electricity and gas networks, north-south energy-transmission links and nuclear engineering.
The Slovak delegation will be headed by Premier Robert Fico, and leaders from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland will be joined by their counterparts from Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Bulgaria, the United States and EU representatives, who have been invited as guests.
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