EU convenes emergency Oil Coordination Group over Druzhba disruption

Brussels is convening yet another “emergency” meeting—this time over diesel and the Druzhba pipeline. Euronews reports that the European Commission has called an extraordinary session of its Oil Coordination Group after Hungary and Slovakia halted diesel supplies to Ukraine following a Russian attack that knocked out the Druzhba pipeline on Ukrainian territory.

Budapest and Bratislava, both heavily reliant on Russian crude delivered via Druzhba, accuse Kyiv of deliberately delaying repairs for political reasons. Ukraine, for its part, portrays the holdouts as addicts clinging to Russian energy. The Commission’s spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen said the meeting—set for next Wednesday—will include Hungary, Slovakia, and Croatia and will discuss the disruption and “possible alternatives” for fuel supply.

The alternative on offer is political: Hungary wants the EU to help route seaborne Russian oil through Croatia’s Adriatic pipeline. Croatia has already rejected the request, which is a polite way of saying it does not want to inherit someone else’s sanctions-risk and geopolitical headache.

In public, the Commission insists it is not pressuring Ukraine to accelerate repairs. “It is very, very important that this is not misinterpreted to mean that we would be exerting any kind of pressure on Ukraine,” Itkonen said, according to Euronews. In private, the EU is centralizing discretion while presenting it as convening stakeholders.

Brussels also claims Hungary and Slovakia have sufficient reserves and face no immediate security-of-supply risk. That statement is less reassurance than a warning: if you have stocks, you can be told to share them, redirect them, or “optimize” them for the common good. Meanwhile, the Commission’s chief spokesperson Paula Pinho stressed concern for Ukraine’s energy situation amid blackouts and heating failures caused by sustained Russian strikes.

The immediate dispute sits inside a larger contradiction. In January 2026, the EU adopted legislation requiring all member states to phase out Russian fossil fuels by 2027. Hungary and Slovakia have filed legal challenges against that law. Yet when an actual disruption hits, the first instinct is not to let market actors source alternatives at whatever price clears supply, but to convene an Oil Coordination Group and negotiate exceptions, routing privileges, and political blame.

If Hungary and Slovakia extend their measures to electricity and gas—as they have threatened—the episode will show how European “energy union” works: member states are told to diversify, then punished when diversification is expensive; told to be sovereign, then managed through emergency governance; told the rules are uniform, then granted bespoke carve-outs via meetings that are urgent.

The EU can call this coordination. Consumers will call it what it feels like: fewer suppliers, more veto points, and energy policy that behaves like foreign policy with a fuel pump attached.