The EU is determined to shoot itself in both feet. Not only are they increasing their bellicose rhetoric against Russia but the European Parliament has now voted by a majority in favour of an immediate import ban on oil, coal and gas from Russia. If this measure is implemented, large parts of Europe’s industrial landscape would cease to exist within a very short time.
An impressive two-thirds majority of 513 MEPs voted in favour of a resolution to this effect. It also called for an embargo on Russian nuclear fuel and the complete abandonment of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines. In addition, the EU Commission and the member states were instructed to present a plan to secure the EU’s energy supply security in the short term.
Othmar Karas of the Austrian ÖVP, First Vice-President of the European Parliament, said: “This is a clear bipartisan message: we must do everything to stop Putin.” German MEP Peter Liese (CDU), on the other hand, invoked the Bucha massacre [the perpetrators have not yet been found] and stated in all seriousness: “We must hit Putin and his oligarchs where it hurts them most. That happens to be the energy sector.”
But the fact that the energy sector is Europe’s Achilles’ heel above all has apparently not yet sunk in with the highly-paid MEPs.
Industries will not be able to bounce back from these measures
Contrary to its general political line, the German government is still hesitant to completely cut off Russian energy supplies to the country as persistent warnings of drastic import bans are coming from industry in particular.
The new Bosch boss Stefan Hartung issued the latest warning. He now told the German business daily Handelsblatt: “The fact is: we need gas for production.”
In particular, semiconductor production urgently requires energy security. “If Germany unilaterally refrains from Russian gas deliveries, highly relevant elements of the supply chain will not only break up at Bosch. I have therefore decided not to forego gas supplies for the time being,” explained Hartung. If there were no gas during a delivery stop, “we would not be able to start up again, with all the consequences.” This would mean that “the industrial basis of our business location would disappear, and not just for a few months”.
Economists at the Hans Böckler Foundation expect a delivery stop to result in a greater slump in overall economic output than in the Corona crisis year 2020. In the worst scenario, in which energy costs rise rapidly as a result of an embargo, there will be a “decline in gross domestic product in 2022 by more than six percent,” according to a special analysis by the Foundation’s Institute for Macroeconomics and Business Cycle Research.
Greens intend to squeeze taxpayers harder
And while the Greens are happy that German taxpayers are impoverished by gas prices to further their anti-auto agenda, the tax burden is also set to increase significantly. Would German voters be happy to keep paying for Green folly?
The German Tax Union is expecting a re-run of the solidarity surcharge due to the immense costs caused by the Corona pandemic and Ukraine war. “The financial burden on the federal government is increasing rapidly every day because of all the crises,” said union president Thomas Eigenthaler to the Stuttgarter Zeitung and the Stuttgarter Nachrichten. From his point of view, these costs “cannot be borne without an update of the solidarity surcharge”.
In the end, Eigenthaler said, politicians would not be able to withstand the fact that additional financial solidarity would only be provided by a few taxpayers. He therefore predicted that the federal government would “sooner or later ask about 80 percent of taxpayers to pay up once more”.
Ukraine no longer at the top of the news cycle, but saunas are
The biggest problem facing Central Europeans by far, according to the official narrative, is global warming, followed by Corona in second place and the war against Ukraine now only in third place. All three problem areas have the potential to ruin at least Germany as a business destination sooner or later. In general, the fight against the remaining part of Germany’s economic power seems to be a high priority for politicians and the mass media, although recently some relief has been promised, at least for the German arms industry.
Germany’s natural gas storage facilities are currently largely empty. This is according to Klaus Müller, head of the Federal Network Agency, as reported by t-online. Saving gas is therefore urgent.
Not only diesel drivers and mask critics, but also sauna-goers are all taking the blame for the self-inflicted impending end of the world. Because “when asked whether saunas and large single flats could still be heated constantly in the future: No, I think that in a gas emergency that would definitely no longer be justifiable,” according to Müller.
That is certainly an unequivocal statement. Not only is German industry, with its still far too high production capacities, ruining the climate and working for President Vladimir Putin, but large single flats and private saunas are now also unacceptable.