Time To Hold Europe’s Energy Dependence Architects Accountable

Europe is once again readying itself for the bitter pill of mass inflation. International energy markets are facing one-in-a-generation levels of disarray following the launch, by the United States and Israel, of Operation Epic Fury against Iran. At the time of writing, Brent is trading at over $92 a barrel—an increase of about 50% from a month ago. Despite moves by the G7 to stabilise the market by releasing vast amounts of oil from their strategic reserves, J.P. Morgan sees it surpassing $120 in the weeks to come, while Russian peace envoy and CEO of the country’s sovereign fund Kirill Dmitriev is betting on it going all the way up to $150 or even $200. Meanwhile, spot gas prices in Germany have spiked above €60 per megawatt hour, making it six times as expensive as it is in the United States. While everyone will suffer from the coming storm, Europe will be among the most affected. The structural reason for this is not the United States or the conflict in the Middle East—it will be European foolishness.

European energy policy has, for the last decade, been singularly—and inexplicably—suicidal. No other bloc of nations has, as Enoch Powell might have put it, “so busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.” In 2000, the Schröder government first put Germany on a path to closing down the entirety of its nuclear power plants. Nuclear generation then accounted for over 30% of German energy production. More recently, under the country’s absurd energy transition—the infamous Energiewende—Berlin’s anti-nuclear policy was accelerated. The country’s last three nuclear plants—Emsland, Isar II and Neckarwestheim II—were shut down in 2023. 

By then, Germany—and Europe—had committed to yet another act of collective lunacy. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, it became the war-obsessed Eurocrats’ determination that EU member states should put an end to their longstanding energy partnership with Russia. In May 2022, Brussels announced a partial oil embargo on the Russians. Later, from February 2023 onwards, the Union forbade the import of refined petroleum products originating from Russia. Last year, under heavy pressure from the European Commission, European states agreed to phase out the import of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) by the end of 2026; pipeline gas, meanwhile, is to be dropped altogether by September 2027. Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen celebrated the event by claiming, “We’ve chosen energy security and independence for Europe. No more blackmail. No more market manipulation by Putin. We stand strong with Ukraine.”

Three months after Jorgensen’s joyous remarks were uttered, the continent once again faces calamity. Should energy prices continue to rise, as they assuredly will in the case of extended hostilities in the Middle East, Europe will face a deep economic recession. Even before this latest shock, Europe’s main economies were hardly doing well. German industrial orders (-11%) and production (-1.2%) have fallen in January at a rhythm that no economist surveyed by Bloomberg had predicted. The Union’s two largest economies, Germany and France, are both facing deep fiscal crises. The French, paralysed by a divided and antagonistic parliament, have only just managed to approve a state budget for 2026, with a vast deficit—of 5% of GDP—predicted. Should a recession materialise, Paris’s deficit—and its government debt, which currently stands at a gargantuan 120% of GDP—might well become ungovernable. Germany is similarly faced with a large fiscal hole of 4.7% of GDP, with Chancellor Merz bent on imposing massive, painful cuts on social spending. If things go south now, a new European crisis can very quickly become existential for the EU.

It is not as if Europe’s inept elites can allege surprise at this turn of events. That the world order is facing a general, multidimensional crisis is hardly breaking news; the ongoing transition away from American-led unipolarity and into a new multipolar phase has been and will, by every indication, continue to be chaotic for years to come. Chaos in the Middle East was hardly an unforeseeable scenario. There was never any doubt that, in our troubled times, the diversification and mitigation of dependencies is the rule of the game. In the post-globalisation era, if a state or group of states cannot wholly avoid reliance on others, it must, at least, make sure to rely on as many as it can. In this context, to simultaneously obliterate Germany’s nuclear sector and to cut off energy ties with Russia wasn’t simply foolish—it was self-sabotage of the highest and most unforgivable order.

For their part, the Russians are not hiding their glee at this latest, explosive example of the consequences of Brussels’ incompetence. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin has taken full advantage of Europe’s self-induced weakness in publicly saying that perhaps his country should hasten its exit from the European market, therefore leaving the Europeans without access to energy when they need it most. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Indeed, from Moscow’s point of view, why should it allow itself to be deprived of its European customers on their terms rather than its own? 

Realism and common sense are what Europe needs today—not more slogans about “the energy transition” or “making Putin pay”, not more mindless bellicosity, not more ideological blindness. Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó has wisely suggested that, with international energy markets under threat, “the EU should immediately lift its ban on Russian oil and gas imports.” No sane person would disagree here. But, beyond that, European nations desperately need genuine energy sovereignty: in the long term, they should, indeed, reduce the need for imported oil with mass electrification and make way for mass electrification through a renewed, mass, steady, and concerted nuclear energy push. 

None of this will come in cheap; none of it will be fast or easy. But it is urgently necessary, particularly when considering that AI and automation will both enormously increase Europe’s energy needs. But one thing is clear as day: none of it will ever get done with this Commission or this European political class. None of it will ever be done under the likes of von der Leyen, Kallas, Jorgensen, or the farcical Green parties of Europe. If the continent is to start afresh, it will first have to understand what went wrong—and to hold those responsible accountable.