Topic: Libya - Silence in Germany
Italy and Germany agree to resume talks on political reforms - on the priority: lifting oil blockade
BY?LIBYAN EXPRESS?- JUL 13, 2022?
The Italian Special Envoy to Libya, Nicola Orlando, said on Twitter that he had met with his German counterpart, Christian Buck, in Berlin on Tuesday.
According to Orlando, both Italy and Germany agree on the priority of restarting Libya’s political process, elections, lifting oil blockade, and unified government to urgently provide basic services to Libyans.
The Italian Special Envoy indicated that Rome and Berlin will work with international partners to preserve Libya’s sovereignty, stability and unity.
Orlando visited France last Monday to meet with?French Special Envoy to Libya Paul Soler, with whom he discussed the urgency of preserving the Libyan political process.
Orlando said on Twitter that Italy and France share the goal of Libya’s unity and stability, adding that they are committed to working together to help Libyans resolve the current impasse and go to elections.
France, Italy and Germany’s Special Envoys all visited Libya throughout last June and met with Presidential Council, High Council of State, House of Representatives and Unity Government’s top officials, urging them to support the UN-led political process and UN Advisor’s efforts to find a common ground for a constitutional basis for elections.
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The Turkish Intervention in Libya
F?rsvarsdepartementet/Ministry of Defence Sweden.
Abstract:
This FOI report is a case study of Turkey’s intervention in Libya, launched in late 2019 and early 2020. In addition to offering a general background on the Libyan conflict and Turkish policy, it describes and analyses Ankara’s involvement in the war since 2011. The core of the analysis is an investigation of Turkey’s aims and interests as well as the means and actions it has deployed. The report also suggests certain conclusions about the effects on Libya and on Turkish foreign policy. The report finds that Turkey’s intervention is likely to have been motivated by factors that were primarily geopolitical/ideological and secondarily economic in nature, and that it utilised an innovative combination of conventional and unconventional means, including the deployment of Syrian mercenaries backed by Turkish drones. By and large, the intervention has been a success for Turkey, allowing it to cement its influence as a primary external actor in Libya, deal a blow to foreign competitors, secure a favourable maritime agreement with Tripoli, and set the scene for a potential future economic payoff. The situation in Libya remains risky and unstable, however, and the costs to Turkey may grow over time. By and large, the intervention has been a success for Turkey, allowing it to cement its influence as a primary external actor in Libya, deal a blow to foreign competitors, secure a favourable maritime agreement with Tripoli, and set the scene for a potential future economic payoff. The situation in Libya remains risky and unstable, however, and the costs to Turkey may grow over time.
Executive Summary
In late 2019 and early 2020, Turkey intervened militarily in Libya, to support an embattled UN-recognised government in Tripoli against the forces of Khalifa Heftar, based in the country’s eastern regions. The Turkish intervention successfully turned the war around. By mid-2020 the frontlines had stabilised, and as the country’s UN-led peace process resumed, a new unity government was formed in Tripoli. Within this government, too, Turkey came to exercise a powerful influence.
This FOI report looks at the role played by Turkey in Libya since the start of its civil war in 2011, the interests that led the Turkish government to intervene, and the methods used to pursue those interests. It contextualises the Turkish role in Libya by describing the background to the Libyan conflict and Turkey’s evolving foreign policy. In a final chapter, it looks at the results of the Turkish intervention and its likely consequences for Turkey’s foreign policy behaviour going forward.
Libya has been without a functioning central state since the foreign-backed toppling of Moammar al-Gaddafi’s regime in 2011. Militias, Islamist groups, and tribal fighters have filled the space vacated by Gaddafi’s dictatorship, creating a turbulent, fragmented environment in which foreign actors meddle incessantly.
Since approximately 2014–16, the country has been roughly divided between two major constellations of militias and political actors. One has been centred in Tripoli and other western cities, enjoyed UN recognition, and relied on the support of Turkey, Qatar, and several Western nations. The other, led by Heftar, has been based in eastern cities like Benghazi and Tobruk, backed by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Russia, and France. Over time, Turkey came to be the dominant supporter of the west-Libyan camp, escalating its involvement incrementally to match its opponents. When its Libyan partners were at risk of defeat in 2019, Turkey decided to gamble on an overt intervention, which has successfully preserved and even expanded Turkish influence.
The Libya intervention would be difficult to imagine, had not Turkey’s own foreign policy changed so dramatically over the past decade. Deeply embroiled in the Middle East’s post-Arab Spring feuding, President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an has opted for tough hard-power tactics and bullish nationalism. Through fighting in Syria and deal-making with Russia, Erdo?an has sought to fend off Middle Eastern threats and rivals, expand Turkey’s influence, and raise the status of his government to that of a serious regional power. After suffering a coup attempt in 2016, Erdo?an purged his government and doubled down on his transformation of Turkish politics, both domestic and foreign.
The aims and interests driving Turkey’s engagement with Libya, and eventually leading it to intervene militarily, are manifold. No single explanation suffices, but a combination of geopolitical, political-ideological, and economic interests have collectively served to draw Turkey into Libya. These include Erdo?an’s quest for prestige and regional power; Turkey’s involvement in a complex set of Middle Eastern proxy wars; the power games played by Erdo?an and Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia; Turkey’s hopes of building leverage over the EU; and the special role that Libya can play in underwriting Turkey’s claim on vast swathes of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Erdo?an’s own political ideas and the Islamist and nationalist tastes of his political base have also played a role, though domestic factors seem to matter less than geopolitics. With time, however, Turkey has become more focused on potential economic gains. Gaddafi’s fall interrupted Turkish business in Libya to the tune of $19 billion; Turkish companies now seek to recover that money, and hope that oil-rich Libya will retain their services in a post-conflict reconstruction phase.
In support of these interests, Turkey has used an array of different means. The military campaign relied on an unconventional recipe first developed during Turkey’s post-2016 interventions in Syria: a combination of Turkish special forces and advisors, Syrian proxy fighters brought in with the assistance of a governmentlinked mercenary company, and Turkish military drones. In the winter of 2019–20, this unusual mix of assets and capabilities was deployed overseas in Libya. Turkey also sent significant quantities of arms and equipment to its local partners, helped them set up training camps, and took charge of planning. Last but not least, it deployed aerial and naval assets to assist with radar surveillance, reconnaissance flights, and modern air defence systems – big-ticket military items that would normally be far beyond the reach of militia fighters.
In addition to the military side of the intervention, Turkey has provided its Libyan partners with diplomatic and political support. In cooperation with its Qatari ally, it has launched a media campaign unfolding across several formats and languages, including in Turkish, English, and Arabic. What Turkey has not offered its Libyan allies, however, is serious economic support. This seeming omission likely reflects Turkey’s stressed financial situation, as well as Libya’s ability to self-fund and even pay for assistance, but it also hints at Ankara’s long-term ambition to make the Libyan war carry its own costs.
In sum, the report finds that Turkey’s intervention was swift, innovative, and effective, up to a point. Pitted against Heftar’s powerful backers, including Russia, the Turkish military faces hard limits on what it can do offensively, and Ankara’s political influence is not enough to carry the conflict to a negotiated resolution.
While Turkey has so far benefitted from the status quo, and is now likely to dig down further and seek permanent military bases, the conflict itself may drag on indefinitely. Worryingly, from a Turkish military perspective, Erdo?an has failed to formulate a clear endgame. As time passes, Turkey may well face mission creep and blurred objectives; and in a crisis, its armed forces could find that they are exposed, hard to supply, and stretched thin by straddling a few too many conflicts. Another source of worry is what the Libyan deployment tells us about the Erdo?an government’s growing appetite for unilateral action and risk. Having succeeded in Libya, Turkey may well be tempted to try its new trick in other crises, whether that be in Cyprus, Iraq, or Bosnia.
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NZZ: Warum soll Europa mit Deutschland solidarisch sein? Brüssel und seine absurden Ideen
von Eric Gujer
Europa soll Gas sparen, weil Deutschland eine falsche Energiepolitik betrieben hat. Früher war jeder für seine Fehler selbst verantwortlich. Aber in der EU ist schon lange nichts mehr so, wie es sein sollte.
In der Berliner Politik gibt es das sch?ne Wort Bemühenszusage. Man sagt zu, sich zu bemühen, weiss aber genau, dass am Ende nichts dabei herauskommt. Genau das veranstalten die EU-Staaten jetzt mit Deutschland.?Sie haben zugesagt, Gas einzusparen,?aber ob sie dies wirklich tun werden, muss sich erst weisen. Der Plan der EU-Kommission, eine verbindliche Quote vorzuschreiben, ist jedenfalls vom Tisch – und das ist gut so.
Die Idee der deutschen Kommissionspr?sidentin Ursula von der Leyen, die EU müsse sich mit Berlin solidarisch zeigen, war von Anfang an absurd. Der deutsche Gasnotstand ist das Ergebnis bewusster Entscheidungen und damit etwas anderes als der Corona-Notstand in Teilen Europas im Jahr 2020. Dieser war h?here Gewalt, jener ist schlechte Politik.
In der EU galt bisher der Grundsatz, dass die Mitgliedsl?nder für ihre Fehler selbst geradestehen müssen. Niemand verteidigte dies eifriger als Finanzminister Wolfgang Sch?uble, als Athen zum Sanierungsfall geworden war.
Dass nun die Achse Brüssel–Berlin das Prinzip der Selbstverantwortung aushebeln wollte, zeigt, wie weit es mit der EU gekommen ist. Es zeigt auch, dass der europ?ische Musterknabe Deutschland einige Mitschuld am jetzigen Zustand tr?gt.
Die Krisen setzen Kr?fte frei, die Brüssel nicht kontrollieren kann
Vier Krisen, vier apokalyptische Reiter: das griechische Finanzdebakel, die Massenmigration 2015, die Pandemie und der Ukraine-Krieg. Sie haben das Gesicht der Union gründlicher ver?ndert als die meisten Entscheidungen des Europ?ischen Rats.
Das Zusammenspiel zwischen einem Krisenjahrzehnt und der unerbittlichen Logik der W?hrungsunion setzte eine nur noch schwer kontrollierbare Dynamik in Gang. Früher hiess es, die EU sei wie ein Fahrrad. Wenn sie sich nicht bewege, falle sie um. Damals wusste man aber nicht, dass dieses Fahrrad von niemandem gelenkt wird.
Die Finanzm?rkte, ein Virus und die Geopolitik haben sich als die wahren Herrscher entpuppt. Die Zauberlehrlinge von Brüssel müssen sich stets der Macht des Faktischen beugen. Was aber kommt als N?chstes? Wie wird der abrupte Wechsel von niedrigen Zinsen zu einer hohen Inflation die EU ver?ndern und verformen?
Der frühere deutsche Finanzminister Theodor Waigel glaubte noch so selbstbewusst wie naiv, die durch die Einführung des Euro freigesetzten Kr?fte beherrschen zu k?nnen. Das Ergebnis waren die Maastrichter Kriterien aus dem Jahr 1992, die für j?hrliche Neuverschuldung und Gesamtverschuldung penibel genaue Obergrenzen vorsahen.
Nachdem Berlin und Paris als Erste die Kriterien missachtet hatten, wurden sie im Zuge der Corona-Seuche g?nzlich beerdigt. Natürlich heisst es euphemistisch, sie seien ?ausgesetzt?. Angesichts der italienischen und franz?sischen Staatsverschuldung nimmt allerdings niemand an,?dass die Richtlinien je wieder angewendet werden.
Theo Waigel dürfte die W?hrungsunion heute nicht mehr wiedererkennen. Nicht nur seine Erfindung, die Maastricht-Regeln, wurde geschleift. Auch andere Grunds?tze mussten geopfert werden. Die Euro-Krise und die Pandemie machten dem Verbot der Staatsfinanzierung durch die Europ?ische Zentralbank ein Ende.?Die EU ist ganz offiziell eine Schuldenunion, seit die Kommission im Rahmen der Covid-Bek?mpfung die Erlaubnis erhielt, Schulden aufzunehmen.
Die Deutschen sehen sich als Verlierer der Entwicklung, sie fühlen sich übervorteilt, als Opfer und Zahlmeister eines verschwenderischen Südens. Tats?chlich hat die gr?sste Wirtschaftsmacht und Garantin des Euro an Einfluss gewonnen.
Obwohl der Euro nur die W?hrungsunion betrifft, besitzt Berlin eine umfassende Vetomacht in der EU. Unberechenbar ist nur, wann Deutschland diese nutzt. Man schwankt zwischen dominantem Führungsanspruch und Nachgiebigkeit. H?rte gegenüber Athen und Kompromissbereitschaft bei gemeinsamen Schulden – es passt wenig zusammen.
Eine kaum verhüllte Erpressung
In der Diskussion um eine feste Sparquote fiel beil?ufig das Argument, wenn die deutsche Wirtschaft wegen des Gasmangels schrumpfe, ziehe das ganz Europa in Mitleidenschaft. Eine kaum verhüllte Erpressung und zugleich der Offenbarungseid einer verfehlten Energiepolitik. Schon einmal wollte Berlin die Spielregeln zu seinen Gunsten ?ndern, indem es die Folgen einer nationalen Fehlentscheidung auf die EU-Partner abzuw?lzen versuchte. Gem?ss der Devise: Alle Mitglieder sind gleich, nur Deutschland ist ein bisschen gleicher.
Auch in der Migrationskrise sollte eine feste Quote her – für die Verteilung von einer Million Flüchtlingen, die Berlin unbedacht ins Land gelassen hatte. Auch damals machten die anderen die Pl?ne zunichte und erinnerten die Deutschen an ihre Eigenverantwortung. Deutschland ist m?chtig, aber nicht allm?chtig.
Dennoch fühlen sich Süd- und Osteurop?er ihrerseits als Opfer. Die Asymmetrie in der Wahrnehmung ist ebenso ein Grund für die wachsenden Fliehkr?fte in der EU wie die Eigendynamik des Euro.
领英推荐
Trotz der Gas-Schlappe ist die deutsche Stellung stark: in Finanzfragen ohnehin, wie die Griechen mit dem ihnen oktroyierten Austerit?tsprogramm zu spüren bekamen, aber auch in nationalen politischen Fragen, die Deutschland eigentlich nichts angehen.
Als Italien im Sog der griechischen Kalamit?ten in Bedr?ngnis geriet, konnte sich Berlin Hilfe nicht vorstellen, solange Silvio Berlusconi regierte. Der Ministerpr?sident, damals ebenso ein Feindbild der deutschen ?ffentlichkeit wie ?der faule Grieche?, trat zurück.
Wann immer die Europ?ische Zentralbank die Euro-Zone noch ein bisschen mehr zur Schulden- und Haftungsunion macht, richten sich alle Blicke angsterfüllt nach Karlsruhe. Das war beim Programm zum Anleihenkauf ebenso der Fall wie beim Corona-Fonds; und es wird sich angesichts der jüngsten Massnahmen wiederholen, mit denen die EZB die Folgen des Zinsanstiegs für die hochverschuldeten L?nder d?mpft. Jedes Mal muss das Bundesverfassungsgericht urteilen, ob sich das mit der deutschen Verfassung vereinbaren l?sst. Bereits einmal zeigte das Gericht seine Z?hne und?bezichtigte den Europ?ischen Gerichtshof, seine Kompetenzen zu überschreiten.
Das Bundesverfassungsgericht ist heute das, was einst die Bundesbank war: der von irdischen Vorgaben unabh?ngige Olymp, dessen Entscheidungen Europa in Zugzwang versetzen. Um dem Diktat der deutschen W?hrungshüter zu entgehen, dr?ngte Paris einst Bonn zur Preisgabe der Mark und zur Einführung des Euro. Der Zuchtmeister erstand in anderer Form wieder auf. Mit den Karlsruher Urteilen droht latent ein ?Krieg der Gerichte? und damit ein Verfassungskonflikt in der EU. Das will niemand riskieren, und so bestimmt Karlsruhe die Grenzen der europ?ischen Finanzpolitik.
Die EU geh?rt zu den Verlierern des Ukraine-Kriegs
Vier Krisen, vier apokalyptische Reiter: Sie demonstrieren, dass sich die Hoffnungen des Maastrichter Gipfels nicht erfüllt haben. Europa ist allenfalls um einige Illusionen ?rmer. Die Integration hat zwar Fortschritte gemacht, aber in Richtung Schuldenunion. Das ist nicht die europ?ische Finalit?t, das geeinte Europa, von dem einst viele getr?umt haben. Mehr wirtschaftliche Konvergenz, eigentlich das Ziel des Experiments Euro, stellte sich ebenfalls nicht ein.
Auch gegen Deutschlands Vormachtstellung ist kein Kraut gewachsen. Sie schrumpft nur, wenn seine Wirtschaftskraft nachl?sst. Das war in den neunziger Jahren so und wiederholt sich vielleicht wegen des Gas-Schocks. Ernstlich wünschen kann sich das niemand.
Der Frieden, den die EU dem Kontinent bringen wollte, scheint heute weiter entfernt denn je. Europa ist nicht der Stabilit?tsanker, für den es sich lange gehalten hat. Mit seinen Normen wollte es als Vorbild in der Welt wirken – eine Soft Power im Gegensatz zum militarisierten Amerika. Nun stellt sich heraus, dass es nicht einmal den Frieden in der direkten Nachbarschaft garantieren kann und auf die USA angewiesen bleibt.
Die geo?konomischen Folgen der hausgemachten Energiekrise sind dabei noch gar nicht berücksichtigt. Verliert die europ?ische Wirtschaft deswegen an Wettbewerbsf?higkeit, st?rkt das die Konkurrenz in Asien. Dort nimmt man zudem aufmerksam zur Kenntnis, dass die Europ?er?ihre ambitionierte Klimapolitik verw?ssern müssen.
Das europ?ische Politikmodell, das auf wirtschaftlicher St?rke und dem unerschütterlichen Glauben an die eigene überlegenheit fusste, hat sichtlich an Attraktivit?t verloren. Das Fahrrad f?llt nicht um, aber sein Schlingerkurs ist atemberaubend.
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Nord Stream II: Shaking hands with the devil
26 August 2016?by?Juraj Mesík?
The gas pipeline Nord Stream II should double the existing natural gas transport capacity from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea.?Juraj Mesík explains why the Kremlin will be the biggest winner of this project.
Nord Stream II, a project which aims to double existing natural gas transport capacity from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea from its current annual capacity of 55 billion cubic metres (bcm) to 110 bcm, is being presented to the German and EU public as a?private business venture by six major companies: Germany’s Uniper and BASF/Wintershall, UK-Dutch company Royal Dutch Shell, Austria’s OMV and France’s ENGIE are each to hold a 10 percent stake, while Russia’s Gazprom is to hold a 50 percent stake.
While formally private, Gazprom has been demonstrated to be an arm of Kremlin policy and a key source of income for the Russian state. Gazprom’s gas deliveries have been repeatedly used for political blackmail, while the true limits of “private property” in Russia were fully exposed by the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his erstwhile company, Yukos, that was forcibly broken up by the Russian government for clearly political purposes. The telling fate of former German Chancellor Gerhard Schr?der – once the symbolic figure of a united Europe and today a Kremlin puppet – is a contagious example of a completely different personal story to that of Khodorkovsky. It demonstrates how working for Kremlin interests may be much better paid than working for the interests of the German and European people.
Interestingly, Robert Fico, prime minister of Slovakia and Schr?der’s good friend, recently had at least two secretive meetings with Alexey Miller, Gazprom’s CEO and a member of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. The first took place on 11 February, just three weeks ahead of Slovakia’s national election, while the second took place in late June 2016, one week before Slovakia assumed the EU presidency.[1]?No statement about the purpose of these visits or the contents of the discussions was ever published.
Cui bono, Nord Stream II?
Let us return to Nord Stream II. Who benefits from this marriage between five super-rich Western European companies and the Kremlin?
At over 240 bcm, the existing capacity of gas pipelines between the EU and Russia already amounts to twice what is needed. The capacity of the Bratrstvo (Brotherhood) pipeline via Ukraine and Slovakia is 140 bcm, Nord Stream’s existing capacity is 55 bcm, the capacity of the Yamal pipeline via Belarus and Poland is 34 bcm, and several other smaller pipelines via Ukraine to Romania and the Balkans account for another c. 11 bcm. How does this 240 bcm transport capacity compare to the EU’s actual gas imports from Russia? According to Gazprom’s?own data[2], Russia exported 100 bcm of natural gas to Western Europe in 2015 – far less than half of the existing transport capacity.
So what is the point in building another 55 bcm pipeline and augmenting an already deeply underutilised capacity? Indeed, only 43 percent of Nord Stream’s capacity was utilised in 2013, 65 percent in 2014 and 71 percent in 2015. Is European consumption of natural gas experiencing rapid growth? Not at all: from its 2010 peak of 502 bcm it had fallen 23 percent by 2014 to 387 bcm, the lowest level since 1995.[3]?The EU’s gas consumption did increase to 402 bcm in 2015, but just ten years ago – in 2005 – it was 499.5 bcm.
Is the EU’s gas consumption expected to grow to justify the need for Nord Stream II? Hardly: the limited increase in 2015 consumption was the result of a significant drop in natural gas prices accompanying a dramatic fall in crude oil prices. In addition, a small contribution to the statistical increase in EU consumption can be attributed to the re-export to Ukraine of gas imported to Slovakia and Poland from Russia. The key fact is that 80 percent of all natural gas consumed in the EU is used by six Western European member states (Germany being the largest, followed by the UK, Italy, France, the Netherlands and Spain),[4]?all of which have strong energy efficiency and renewable energy utilisation programmes. Unless Europe decides to waste cheap natural gas in vain, the decline in consumption will continue.
Doubled to 110 bcm, Nord Stream would be able to handle all of Russia’s gas exports to Western Europe. But what would the consequences of such a development be? Within a very short time, both the Brotherhood and Yamal pipelines would go out of business, and without continual maintenance and investment they would soon fall into disrepair. Stripped of important revenue sources, Poland, Slovakia, Belarus, Ukraine and their 100 million people would become economically weaker and more vulnerable to separate “deals” with Moscow.
The big winner would indeed be the Kremlin, securing more European money flowing to Moscow for a longer period of time. Western investment into Nord Stream II would commit Europe to Russian natural gas for longer, while intensified lobbying by the Western gas companies involved in the deal could discourage more aggressive energy conservation, encourage waste, and delay the transition to renewables.
Potential impacts of Nord Stream II
The aim of corporate and Russian propaganda is for the German public to believe that the “only” losers in a Nord Stream II deal would be Germany’s eastern neighbours. They would certainly be losers: an important Kremlin objective is, without a doubt, to increase pressure the EU’s eastern flank and on Ukraine in particular. An economically weaker eastern EU periphery and an economically and socially more polarised EU are exactly what the Kremlin is hoping for in its quest to destroy the European Union and re-establish the good old world order of the first half of the 20th century. Nord Stream II would make anti-EU propaganda and subversion much easier in an economically, socially and politically more polarised continent. A poorer Ukraine would be even more vulnerable to Russian occupation and military aggression, and Putin’s hold on Belarus would become even firmer.
Significantly, however, the deal would have negative consequences for Germany, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands and other European countries as well. Indeed, Nord Stream II would commit Germany and Europe to buying more Russian gas than necessary and for a longer period of time. The flow of money from the EU would thus continue to finance Russia’s extreme militarisation, which represents a direct and by far the most significant threat to peace in Europe. According to the Global Militarization Index[5], published annually by the Bonn International Center for Conversion, Russia is notoriously among the five most militarised countries in the world. Thirty-seven per cent of Russian federal budget expenditures between January and March 2016 – amounting to 1332 billion roubles – were spent on the military and security forces.[6]?The vast majority of these funds came from oil and gas sales in Europe.
Gas revenues as Kremlin’s war chest
It is us – the Russian gas-consuming Europeans – who are helping finance Russia’s wars in Ukraine and Syria, its military occupations of Crimea, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria, and provocative manoeuvres by Russian jets in the Baltic region and elsewhere. The more gas and oil we burn, the more money will go to Putin and his armies – those in uniform as well as armies of trolls – to wage hybrid wars against Europe.
Nord Stream II would commit Germany and Western Europe to continual and possibly increased natural gas consumption despite their declared goal to decarbonise the German and European economies. The year 2014 was the warmest on record, and the year 2015 was warmer still. Every month of 2016 thus far has broken previous world temperature records, and Japan Meteorological Agency data show that the first three months of 2016 were 1.5° C above the preindustrial level.
Does anyone still remember the Paris conference and calls to limit the temperature increase by 2100 to 1.5° C? We are already there in the first half of 2016! Does anyone in Europe really care, or is it all just lip service? Is burning more fossil fuels the real German and EU policy?
It is certainly the policy of Uniper, Shell, BASF, ENGIE and OMV. And, of course, of the Kremlin, which is existentially dependent on producing more and more CO2?and methane emissions by selling more and more natural gas and oil.
Are Germans serious about peace? Then they should stop financing Russian militarism – the only real external threat to Europe. They should import less, not more, gas from Russia!
Nord Stream II as a threat to both the EU and climate
Are Germans serious about the EU – Europe’s greatest political achievement in the wake of the bloody first half of the 20th century? Then they should stop financing its subversion and destruction through the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare.
Are Germans serious about climate change and the future of the planet? Then they should burn less, not more, fossil fuels – including burning much less natural gas.
Nord Stream stands against the EU’s survival, against peace in Europe, against the environment, against resource efficiency, against the climate. Is this enough to stop the deal between the Kremlin and five greedy companies, or will history once again justify those famous words attributed to Lenin, Putin’s predecessor in the Kremlin?
“These capitalists are such idiots – they will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Just replace “capitalists” with “member states of the EU”.?
[4]?For details and ten-year consumption trends, see?https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/pdf/energy-economics/statistical-revie…, p. 23.
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