Talking past bull is very easy. Today everyone agrees that Germany’s energy policy based on the confidence that Russia would put its economic interests before war interests has been a tremendous mistake. At the moment of truth, Vladimir Putin has preferred to invade Ukraine despite the consequences that this could cause to his country. And also the lack of a common energy policy throughout the EU is another failure that everyone today tends to remember. Therefore, rather than discussing the past, we should look to the future so as not to make the same mistakes again. And tomorrow, Friday, there is a historic meeting of the EU’s energy ministers that would require a high-minded vision and a perspective for years ahead that moves away from the problem we are suffering today.
Reading these days some diplomats who assure that Germany has a punctual problem of energy deficit and that in two years it can be solved, one cannot stop thinking how the short-termism of some can drag the whole of Europe to persist in the same mistakes. Nobody knows when the war in Ukraine will end, but it seems difficult to think that in two, three or four years the then head of Russia (it may still be Vladimir Putin) will change his policy towards Europe and we will return to a stage of exchanges trade like that of recent decades.
No. This is not going to be like that anymore. The cold war has come to stay. And Europe will have to get used to living with the threat of a potential rival beyond the Urals. Therefore, energy policy decisions must be made with the understanding that Russian oil and gas will no longer return. And that, therefore, it is not a question of looking for patches of one or two winters, but of thinking of a definitive solution to supply the supply to all of Europe without counting on Russia. Anyone who wants to think that Ukraine will defeat Russia and bring about a downfall of the Putin regime has every right to think so, but please don’t let him attend the ministerial meeting this Friday. Stopping the Midcat project was already a mistake a few years ago and it can be again now. Europe must interconnect better and, above all, think about the common interest.
