SaS: Premier Managed to Negotiate Nothing in Gas Transit Issue at Summit

Bratislava, March 7 (TASR) - The opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party at a news conference on Friday stressed that Premier Robert Fico (Smer-SD) actually managed to negotiate nothing for Slovakia in the field of ​​gas transit at the extraordinary summit of the European Union (EU) in Brussels on Thursday (March 6). "Without exaggeration, history is being made in Brussels these days. The decision is being made as to what European security will look like, how to help Ukraine repel Russia's aggression, so that the war will be as far from the Schengen border as possible. And what is Fico doing at this historic time? Well, he's feeding his voters with populist lies. He's pretending to negotiate Russian gas transit via Ukraine, but all he's managing to negotiate is that he should obediently speak to Ukraine about it and not disturb the real leaders in their efforts to defend Europe," stated MP Vladimira Marcinkova (SaS). At the same time, SaS MPs criticised several steps taken by the government in the field of ​​foreign policy, pointing out that Slovakia has become unreliable in the eyes of its closest allies. The MPs have opposed his policy of the four cardinal directions and spoken about the isolation of Slovakia. They criticised the premier for the fact that Slovakia hasn't been invited to several informal EU summits on Ukraine and European security due to his lack of credibility. However, SaS praised the overall conclusions of the summit. It welcomed the fact that Fico supported them as well and didn't veto them like Hungarian Premier Viktor Orban did. "Fortunately, he voted in a way that means we don't have to be as ashamed of him as we are of Orban," added Marcinkova. An extraordinary EU summit on support for Ukraine and European defence was held in Brussels on Thursday (March 6). A text stating that the European Commission, Ukraine, and Slovakia need to cooperate in seeking a solution to resume gas transit was included in the conclusions. The Slovak premier said after the summit that EU-member states had admitted that the halt to gas transit via Ukraine "is a problem that threatens the whole EU". ko/df