EU’s Energy Policy Is Self-Destructive

On September 26-28 Moscow will host annual “Russian Energy Week” forum, with more than 5000 delegates from 84 countries, including politicians, businessmen and experts who are going to arrive there to foster lucrative deals, exchange opinions and discuss the future of the global energy sector. The countries of the European Union will not be present there, because they have excluded themselves from equal and profitable international cooperation in this area. Starting from 2022, the EU has been repeatedly and enthusiastically shooting itself in the leg by following the US line of an all-out confrontation with Russia in all spheres, be it political, military or economic. One of the sectors which were directly affected by countless packages of anti-Russian sanctions was the energy sphere.

         Up until 2022 the EU and Russia had a long-standing and fruitful cooperation in this sector, providing cheap and stable energy sources like natural gas and oil for European industry, enabling European producers to compete on the market. That all ended after a disastrous decision by Brussels to ‘strategically defeat’ Russia by using its Ukrainian proxy and was followed by a series of restrictions on the Russian energy sector. This, move in itself catastrophic for the European businesses, as the recent economic decline of industry in the EU, as well as the EU-wide inflation and increase of petrol prices prove, also points to a number of conclusions about Brussel’s energy policy.

         The EU cannot be considered as a reliable partner. Russia’s case shows that Europe can easily neglect its obligations to any foreign exporter of energy resources, if that suits some immediate ideological goals. Moreover, Europeans have also demonstrated their inability to protect their critical energy infrastructure as they failed to prevent a terrorist act against the “Nord Stream” pipelines.

         Common European energy policy often goes against the needs and desires of its member-states in favour of the EU political agenda. Brussels open unwillingness to prolong the export of Russian LNG through the “Druzhba” pipeline after 2024 is going to dramatically hurt the economies of Austria, Slovakia and Hungary.

         By playing along with the US anti-Russian project in Ukraine the EU has shown its complete disregard for the interests of non-EU members, especially of the developing countries, which rely on the energy supplies from Russia. The recent 14th package of the EU anti-Russian sanctions has banned the re-export of Russian LNG into third countries through European ports. That deprives many nations of the Global South of relatively cheap energy resources, which could have catastrophic consequences for the economies and ordinary people. At the same time, the EU still buys the Russian LNG to its markets, as it is in a high demand by European industries.

         Overall, EU’s anti-Russian policy in the energy sector, which was undertaken purely on the orders of Washington and at the expense of ordinary European businesses and citizens, including Irish, in order to to “strategically defeat Russia” seems to be irresponsible, misguided and poorly executed gamble.