The EU introduced fertilizer tariffs to cut Russian war revenues. Budapest wants them suspended. The election is in 27 days.

The EU introduced punitive duties on Russian and Belarusian fertilizers in July 2025, specifically to cut revenues Moscow uses to fund its war against Ukraine. On Monday, Hungary’s agriculture minister sent Brussels a formal letter demanding that all of those duties be cut to zero, citing the disruption of global fertilizer supply caused by the war in Iran.

István Nagy’s letter, addressed to Commissioners Christophe Hansen and Maroš Šefčovič, calls for zeroing out all duties on Russian and Belarusian fertilizers. If granted, the move would restore Russian and Belarusian fertilizer access to the EU market duty-free—reversing the core mechanism Brussels designed to squeeze Moscow’s export revenues.

This is Budapest’s third major push to roll back EU sanctions on Russian-linked trade in six weeks. The same day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused European leaders of “blackmail” over sanctions, noting that Hungary had already blocked the EU’s 20th Russia sanctions package and a €90 billion ($103 billion) preferential loan for Ukraine, and had demanded Ukraine repair the Druzhba oil pipeline that Russia bombed in January.

Iran disrupts, Russia benefits

The EU introduced punitive duties on Russian and Belarusian fertilizers from 1 July 2025—a flat rate of €40–45 ($42–47) per tonne on top of an existing 6.5 percent base tariff, rising to €430 ($451) per tonne by 2028, according to the EU Council.

The move came after EU imports of Russian fertilizers had risen sharply in the years following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, raising concern that Moscow was redirecting natural gas—hit by European sanctions—into subsidized fertilizer production to sustain export revenues.

Russia imposes a 23.5 percent export tax on key mineral fertilizers, revenue that flows into the Russian state budget. Russian fertilizer shipments to the EU were still worth approximately $1.96 billion in 2025, according to UN COMTRADE data, though volumes fell sharply in early 2026 once the new levies began to bite. EU domestic production covers only 45–50 percent of the bloc’s fertilizer demand, Nagy writes.

Iran sits at the center of the global fertilizer supply chain. Two of the three main fertilizer types are made from natural gas: urea, the world’s most widely traded nitrogen fertilizer, and ammonia, the gas-derived compound used to produce most synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. Both are concentrated in regions with cheap gas reserves, which is why the Middle East—alongside Russia—dominates global supply.

Phosphate fertilizers, made from phosphate rock mined in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Morocco, are similarly regional. The Middle East accounts for 44 percent of global urea exports, 27 percent of ammonia exports, and 25 percent of phosphate exports, the minister claims. Iran alone contributes approximately five million tonnes of urea annually.

Since the Strait of Hormuz closed, the benchmark export price of urea loaded at Egyptian ports rose from $480–485 per tonne on 27 February to $520 per tonne by 6 March, and the cost of ammonia for northwest Europe delivery climbed $155 per tonne in under three weeks—to $750 per tonne by 5 March—according to the letter.

Iran is not the only pressure point. The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism has applied to all fertilizer imports across the bloc since January 2026, imposing a carbon levy that raises input costs regardless of origin. Nagy cites this, too.

The European Commission had already proposed suspending customs duties on fertilizer raw materials from third countries—cutting tariffs from 6.5 percent to zero, Nagy notes. That proposal explicitly excludes Russia and Belarus.

The July 2025 regulation also includes a monitoring provision allowing the Commission to suspend fertilizer duties if prices rise significantly above 2024 levels—but that provision was designed for market emergencies, not to restore Russian and Belarusian access specifically.

Nagy’s letter asks Brussels to extend the suspension to cover them anyway. “In these fertilizer categories, Belarus and Russia have traditionally been Hungary’s most important supplier,” Nagy wrote.

Belarus’s back door

Belarus holds about 23 percent of global potash reserves, with no synthetic substitute for potassium as a crop nutrient. Nagy’s letter makes a particular point about phosphorus and potassium: Hungary produces only nitrogen-based fertilizers domestically; for the other two essential crop nutrients, it relies entirely on imports.

Belaruskali, the state potash monopoly, is the largest taxpayer in Belarus, providing the Lukashenka regime with a critical source of foreign currency. The EU has kept its sanctions on Belaruskali in place even as the United States lifted its own in December 2025—in exchange for the release of 123 political prisoners, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski. Budapest is now asking Brussels to follow Washington’s lead, without the prisoner releases.

Belarus and Russia form the so-called Union State—a political and economic union with no internal customs border. Goods, including fertilizers, move freely between them. Extending EU tariff relief to Belarusian exports would open an equally unobstructed pathway for Russian-origin products rerouted through Minsk.

Restoring duty-free Belaruskali access would replenish revenues Brussels spent four years trying to restrict—revenues that Minsk channels into the regime that hosts Russia’s missile strikes on Ukraine.

The pattern behind the request

A March poll by the 21 Research Centre, reported by TVP World, put Péter Magyar’s Tisza party at 53 percent among decided voters against 39 percent for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz ahead of the 12 April parliamentary election.

Orbán has built his campaign around economic grievances—energy costs and food prices—and the claim that EU sanctions harm ordinary Hungarians more than Russia. Fidesz billboards across Hungary depict Zelenskyy demanding money.

Nagy’s letter was sent 27 days before the election.

Zelenskyy, speaking to Interfax-Ukraine that day about the Druzhba pipeline, put a question that applies equally here: “How is this different from lifting sanctions on the Russians?”