Abuse of the state of emergency (2): the energy dictatorship of Olaf, Uschi & Co (Part 2)

Even after the decision of the German Constitutional Court, Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck wants to maintain the economic projects that were to be financed by the Climate and Transformation Fund. There is a lot of money at stake, and the survival of Germany's prestigious "energy transition" project depends on it: Germany must achieve climate neutrality by 2045. To achieve this goal, the development of renewable energies must be massively accelerated.

Mr Habeck doesn't seem to care that, following the Federal Constitutional Court's ruling, it is now completely unclear how all this will be paid for: only on Monday, he publicly declared himself in favour of declaring an economic emergency for this year and next, in order to suspend the "debt brake".

The agenda is clear: only by artificially fuelling and prolonging the energy crisis can the rules of the democratic game be suspended in order to implement the EU's energy dictatorship. Germany, an industrial nation and the country's largest economy, is playing a key role in this process.

A brief look at the history of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline clearly shows that the Federal Republic of Germany, in cooperation with the Commission and the Council, has itself contributed considerably to a precarious economic situation in the energy sector. It is clear that the elites in Brussels and Berlin are not only prolonging the crisis themselves, but are also serving the interests of the technostructure.

In a report published in mid-2020, the German Ministry of Economic Affairs indicated 2021 as the completion date for Nord Stream 2 and included the capacity of 55 billion standard cubic metres in the 2020-2030 Network Development Plan (NEP). Only a few months later, the German Federal Network Agency announced that it had suspended the certification procedure for Nord Stream 2 AG as a transmission system operator. [1]

On 22 February 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared in Berlin his decision to halt the certification procedure for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. [2] Germany was clearly no longer in a position to avoid pressure from the EU. The EU had long been opposed to the project (as had Nord Stream 1 before it), not least because it would massively damage relations with the US transatlantic partner.

The arguments put forward cited a "threat to the EU's energy security and the political security of EU Member States", as gas pipelines would undermine the formation of the European Energy Union. The fear of economic destabilisation of Ukraine, which could lose around two billion dollars in transit rights, was also put forward. It is for this reason in particular that the EU institutions have made every effort to torpedo the project, for example through the EU's "3rd Energy Package" and the amended Gas Directive in April 2019. [3]

While the political exchange was taking place in the foreground, lobbyists from across the Atlantic were already forming in the background. As early as August 2017, the US Congress passed legislation to tighten sanctions against Russia and hit its energy sector. But the real aim was rather to increase US gas exports at the expense of Russian exports and to introduce high-priced US liquid gas, obtained by fracking, to the European market rather than Russian gas. [4]

In fact, the EU has signed a supply agreement with the US government for 2022. The US has assured the EU that it will supply an additional 50 million m³ of US liquefied natural gas (LNG) per year until 2030. Between January and November 2022, LNG imports from the United States totalled more than 50 billion m³. This is more than double the figure for the whole of 2021. [5]

The Commission and the Council are putting in place concrete measures as part of the sanctions packages to prolong the precarious economic situation in the area of European energy supply: For example, the purchase, import or transfer of crude oil and certain petroleum products by sea from Russia to the EU has been banned; Member States have set a ceiling on the price of oil; there is a ban on the import of all types of Russian coal; a ban on new EU investment in the Russian mining sector; a ban on the export of certain oil refining technologies; and Germany and Poland have been banned from importing Russian oil by pipeline. [6]

These measures are certainly being sold under the heading of "climate protection" to the people of the Member States, who have to bear the financial and economic burdens of this new energy dictatorship of the Commission and the Council. Here too, the artifice of the "state of emergency" is being used to ensure that the measures envisaged are necessary, urgent, unavoidable and without alternative. The European Parliament has already declared a "state of climate emergency" at the end of 2019. [7] In its Global Risks 2020 report, the World Economic Forum warns of a "global emergency that will lead to loss of life, social and geopolitical tensions and negative economic impacts". [8]

A state of pandemic emergency, a state of energy emergency, a state of climate emergency... the Commission has put in place a whole series of powerful instruments that are only partially covered by the EU treaties.

The democratic deficits are as little discussed in European political and media public opinion as the fact that the EU institutions themselves have largely contributed to the crises mentioned and are deliberately prolonging them.

It is obvious that the Commission and the Council are guided by the interests of the lobbies in their actions relating to emergency measures: this is obvious for the purchase of vaccines, which has mainly served the economic interests of the pharmaceutical industry; it is obvious for the purchase of energy resources, which clearly favours American or Arab suppliers and clearly harms others, such as Russia; it is obvious for the joint purchase of munitions for Ukraine, which turns the EU institutions into servants of the arms lobby and NATO.

The sovereign, i.e. the peoples of the Member States, are far less harmed by the Covid 19 virus, the war in Ukraine or the challenges linked to energy supply than by the systematically abusive actions of the European institutions. By acting as the henchmen and auxiliaries of technology groups or NATO, they are jeopardising the Union's political and economic future.

This analysis was first published in: Le Courrier des Stratèges on November 30th, 2023