With relations between Russia and the EU on the brink of an energy abyss, Brussels is facing a week of almost existential decisions, which will mark a before and after in the supply of fuels to Europe, and very likely will change its course forever. The community debate has been heating up in recent days through two conduits that run in parallel: gas and oil. Russia threatens to cut off the gas that reaches the EU, after having closed last week the handle of the pipes that supplied this fuel to Poland and Bulgaria. And now Brussels is assessing how to proceed with the next package of economic sanctions to hit the Kremlin where it can hurt the most: decreeing an embargo on Russian oil, the sale of which means, in times of peace, an injection of nearly 48,000 million euros a year to the regime. Vladimir Putin, according to Eurostat.
“We cannot accept this type of maneuver,” Barbara Pompili, Minister of Ecological Transition of France, protested, referring to the gas cuts imposed by Russia, just before entering the Council of Energy Ministers of the EU, convened extraordinarily in Brussels.
The European partners have met urgently this Monday to discuss contingency plans, community solidarity mechanisms and alternative supply formulas. Among the measures discussed are the new gas storage regulation proposed by the European Commission, which will force reserves to be filled to 80% before November; or the joint fuel purchase scheme, with which Brussels wants to underline its global purchasing power, as it did with vaccines during the pandemic.
Pompili, whose country holds the EU presidency this semester, has denounced the “unilateral and brutal” decision of the giant Gazprom to suddenly close flows to Poland and Bulgaria when these countries refused to pay for gas supplies in rubles, as required by Russia from March 31. He has also defended that the gas company’s clients continue paying their debt in euros or dollars, as stipulated in 97% of EU contracts, according to European Commission sources. The Community Executive, in addition, considers that paying in rubles would mean violating the financial sanctions imposed by the West against Moscow.
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Meanwhile, the European Commission is finalizing its final proposal to stop importing Russian crude oil, the dart with which Brussels intends to pierce the coffers with which Moscow largely finances its war in Ukraine. But in this struggle the Twenty-seven walk on a wire. The policy of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, threatens to deepen the cracks in the community bloc, while he plans the dark shadow of a scenario of cuts and fuel rationing over the European capitals, something that sources from the Community Executive already consider more than likely in the face to the next winter.
political blackmail
In Brussels there is a growing fear that the cuts were just a first blow from the Kremlin. The new payment system unilaterally demanded by Moscow, which both Warsaw and Sofia have refused to comply with, amounts to a political blackmail tool that Putin can use at will to divide the Twenty-seven.
“It is a warning that any member state could be the next”, recalled the European Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, during a press conference after the meeting of ministers. “It is also an attempt to divide the EU, and we have to respond with unity and solidarity.” During the meeting, the EU Executive shared with the Twenty-seven its strategy to proceed with the payment of Russian gas without violating the sanctions.
Moscow’s latest blow to Poland and Bulgaria has also accelerated the negotiation of the sixth package of economic sanctions against Russia. Community sources assure that it is necessary to give a forceful response. The Commission’s proposal is almost cooked, after a high-level diplomatic discussion carried out over the weekend. And it is expected that the college of European commissioners, under the baton of its president, Ursula von der Leyen, will assess the measures at their meeting on Tuesday. Then, only the final approval of the Twenty-seven would remain for the sanctions to be definitively approved.
Within the EU there are partners who are very reluctant to take sanctions further, such as Hungary. The government of Viktor Orbán, close to Putin, has closed in on sanctioning Russia’s energy sector, after a total embargo on coal was included in the last package approved by the EU. The Hungarian Foreign Minister, Péter Szijjártó, reiterated this Monday in an interview on RTL that Budapest will not vote in favor of measures that endanger the security of oil or gas supply, according to Reuters. The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, one of those responsible for laying out the new package of sanctions, has come to assure that he sees it as unfeasible, for the time being, to achieve the unanimity that the total cut requires. But he also assures that countries could voluntarily move towards energy disconnection from Russia.
The main lines of the new plan, for the moment, are very similar to what Berlin has claimed. Thus, Brussels intends to activate a progressive, but not immediate, embargo on Moscow crude, with a period that gives sufficient margin to prepare alternative supplies. And that takes pressure off the most reticent capitals.
“Germany is not against an embargo on Russian oil,” German Minister for Economy and Climate Action Robert Habeck said in Brussels on Monday. “Of course, it is a significant burden, but we are willing to do it,” he added, assuring that he does not believe that the embargo can be decreed immediately, since some partners are not yet in a position to undertake it and it could lead to an economic catastrophe. .
Habeck made reference to the enormous effort made by Germany to reduce the consumption of Russian crude oil, which has gone from 35% before the war to the current 12%, but explained that there is a localized problem that hampers the process. The Schwedt refinery in the eastern state of Brandenburg runs on the kind of crude that Russia exports. Furthermore, Schwedt is majority owned by Russian state oil company Rosneft. “It would help if we had more time, a few weeks or months, to do the technical preparations,” concluded the German.
Berlin has spent weeks assuring that it could only face a gas embargo at the end of the year. But a gradual disconnection, as it is outlined at the moment, does not convince the most belligerent members of the community club, who seek to go faster to immediately put a stop to one of the great economic items with which the Kremlin continues to finance the war in Ukraine. “What is proposed is too long a period,” says a high-ranking diplomatic source familiar with the negotiation. She thinks that a delay in the disconnection does not sound too much like a sharp imposition of sanctions.
The Polish Minister of Climate, Anna Moskwa, has been one of the toughest in Brussels on Monday. She has called for an immediate veto on both Russian oil and gas. And also a tax, similar to the one imposed on CO₂ emissions, against community countries that do not want to join the energy sanctions: “This money can be used to support Ukraine and to diversify and finance European infrastructure,” he has proposed. Moscow.
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