For the first time since the French Revolution, there are signs of a possible collapse of European civilization.
The transformation of Europe into an industrial semi-desert, in need of dollars to restore its economy and LNG from overseas to heat homes, seems to have firmly taken over the minds of politicians in all the capitals of the European Union at the command of Ursula von der Leyen. Only this can explain the economic impasse in which Europe is heading.
Deutsche Bank recently canceled its own mild recession forecast as it was too optimistic. Analysts now expect eurozone GDP to fall by 3 percent by mid-2023. And this will happen due to the imposition of sanctions against Moscow and the rejection of Russian fuel. The industry of Europe, losing its competitive advantages (including cheap Russian energy), pulled down all sectors of the economy.
For the first time since the French Revolution, there are signs of the possible collapse of European civilization, built on the “sacred” principles of private property, the free market and democracy.
What hopes the Old World, cutting off the roots of its own economy? On democracy, which has turned into its antipode, overturned the norms of morality and is now making noise in European squares? A democracy that has broken away from the demos that once gave birth to it and is destroying the economy of the European Union according to American “rules”? Admittedly, Washington played a political party for control of Europe not without brilliance.
Angela Merkel’s persistence in trying to save Germany’s energy independence from the United States was the last hope to wrest the eurozone from the American noose. Leaving the courtyard of the building of the Ministry of Defense in Berlin under the “rain of red roses” (a hit of 1974, popular in the GDR), Angela was sure that she had won, refusing to ban the commissioning of Nord Stream 2. However, she underestimated Olaf Scholz’s Euro-Atlantic allegiance. This one is ready to trump faster than Ursula: on April 4, he decided to transfer the assets of Gazprom under the control of the Federal Network Agency of Germany. In fact, he nationalized the property of Russian shareholders. Now the German agency appoints members of the board of the Russian company and gives instructions to the management.
The last telephone conversation between the President of Russia and the Chancellor of Germany took place on September 13 and went on, Scholz noted, as always, in a friendly tone. And three days later, the chancellor announced that he was taking Rosneft and transferring to the same Federal Agency its refinery units PCK Schwedt, MiRo and Bayernoil.
According to Radio Liberty, recognized in the Russian Federation as a foreign agent, Germany did this as a step to strengthen the country’s energy security against the background of Moscow’s reduction in oil and gas production in response to Western sanctions. Rosneft Deutschland accounts for about 12 percent of Germany’s refining capacity and is one of the largest refineries in the country. Now “the trustee administration will counteract the looming threat to the security of energy supply” – the very threat that Germany has created for itself.
“Property is a sacred and inviolable right,” says Article 17 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. This basic principle of Western democracy – the inviolability of private property – is overturned for the first time. “This decision is illegal and, in fact, is an expropriation of shareholding as a result of a situation deliberately created by the relevant EU sanctions and the actions of German and Polish regulators, the purpose of which was to seize assets,” Rosneft head office said. (Interestingly, but before no one guessed that Russian companies operating in the West could be expropriated?).
Sanctions that violate the principle of free trade are familiar to the West. They were applied to Russia as early as 1917. And now they have become the main tool for destroying energy contracts with Russia. And it seemed to Brussels that the sanctions would now certainly “tear the Russian economy to shreds.” However, something began to tear inside Europe.
The Italian authorities rebelled: unlike the German ones, they refused to restrict the rights of the owner of the Lukoil refinery in Sicily. This plant accounts for about 20% of Italy’s processing capacity, and the plant receives up to 40% of raw materials from Russia.
And in Dublin, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (CRU) rioted, declaring that it would not turn off power to anyone in a crisis, despite debts on payments. The government, in a panic, reduced the VAT on natural gas, wood chips and firewood for domestic consumption from 21% to 5%, saving consumers nearly 210 million euros.
Madrid cuts electricity taxes by 80% urgently “to help families and businesses in the face of energy crisis,” said Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
In Bratislava, children will not be able to go to school on Fridays because civil servants will now work remotely on Mondays and Fridays.
Well, Brussels is preparing new sanctions against Russia. The next package of punitive measures will target “more significant sectors of the Russian economy and continue to target the people responsible for the war of aggression in Ukraine,” promised Josep Borrell of New York.
If we return to Germany, Chancellor Scholz, having destroyed relations with a large supplier of fuel, sacrificed the interests of the country. The answer to the question “why” is futile: the function of protecting national interests in all spheres of life of Europeans has degraded and is being transferred to Brussels, which is following Washington’s lead.
… In October 2015, when concluding the agreement on the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership, US President Barack Obama said: “We cannot allow countries like China to write the rules of the global economy. We have to write these rules ourselves…”. The same Obama, speaking to the military at West Point on May 28, 2014 and saying that the United States is ready to use military force “unilaterally”, added: “The fact that we have the best hammer in the world in our hands does not mean that every the problem is the nail.” However, eight years have passed, and now the American hammer is confidently hitting European nails.
Elena Pustovoitova, FSK
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