Editorial of the “World”. Like a deer in the headlights of a car, the German government has been taken for a month in the trap of Russian gas, whose economy and consumers of overseas are strongly dependent. What was perceived for two decades in Berlin as a win-win market, including from the geopolitical angle, turned out with the Russian aggression of Ukraine not only a formidable lever of Moscow on Europe, but also a real bomb with economic and social delay.
Only two months ago, Chancellor Olaf Scholz thought they could withstand the pressure of several of its European partners and the Greens, its coalition partners, who requested the abandonment of the northern gas pipeline 2. It has had to give in. The gas pipeline case appears today as a minor subject, compared to the extent of the European Union’s challenge: to break completely with Russia as a source of fossil energies. While Western penalties are raising on the Vladimir Putin regime, it is no longer acceptable for European economies to continue to finance its war in Ukraine by paying it every day 700 million dollars (626 million euros) In hydrocarbon purchases.
Lucidity Welcome
The task is the strongest for Germany, which imports from Russia 55% of its gas. The threat made by Mr. Putin to demand the rublet payment of these hydrocarbons has added to confusion. Europeans refused; The Russian President has relaxed his position by calling Mr. Scholz and his Italian colleague, Mario Draghi, Wednesday, March 30 – betraying his own dependence on the financial resources that gas reports. But Berlin now knows that Russian gas must be renounced and, in the context of the war in Ukraine, the rupture can be brutal. The time of denial is over.
After a few days of an intense debate, the German government obviously took the measure of the emergency. On Wednesday, he referred to the triggering of energy rationing and the establishment of a crisis cell assumes a stop of the Russian supply. The Minister of Economy and Climate, Robert Habeck (Greens), launched an information campaign to alert public opinion on the possible effects of such a decision: “We are in a situation where I must say clearly That every kilowatt hour saved is useful, “he says.
This lucidity is welcome. Chancellor Scholz had indeed given the impression in recent days to procrastinate, facing the seriousness of the foreseeable consequences for the German economy. “The question is not whether we are going to have to lower the heating of a few degrees,” he answered Sunday in a television show. The question is whether we will be able to supply certain structures . The question is mobility. And the question is an incredible number of jobs, because many industrial processes depend on coal, gas and oil. “
But it’s not just a German question. The weight of the German economy in Europe and the integration of EU economies make the urgency of the Berlin reaction to happen to the Russian gas concerns all of its European partners. The possible perspective of having to manage a war saving requires European coordination and solidarity at least equivalent to those that have been implemented to cope with the effects of the CVIV-19 pandemic.