No interim stay had been filed with the Court of Justice of the EU before Wednesday 17 June, and the annulment challenge lodged against the regulation in February now sits with a Hungarian government that wants the ban to stand1. The case was filed by the Orban administration. Peter Magyar's Tisza government, in office since May 2026, has called Russian gas dependency a "systemic risk" and has no political incentive to press for interim relief. The backstop that Central European supply security leaned on switched sides with the change of government.
Slovakia, under Robert Fico, is now the sole live challenger, preparing a separate suspension application on the argument that a measure of this magnitude required unanimity rather than a qualified-majority vote2. An annulment action of this kind rarely produces pre-binding interim relief inside four months of filing, so the legal route has not bought the supply-protection time it was meant to.
After 17 June, Hungary's exempt long-term MVM contract becomes the only remaining legal Russian pipeline import line for Budapest and Bratislava alike, since Slovakia's own short-term arrangements fall inside the ban. Fico is litigating a route that the calendar has already closed: even a successful suspension would land after the binding date, and the one government with standing and motive to seek a fast stay no longer wants one. Slovakia's challenge changes nothing about supply for the binding week itself.
