Europe is in danger of highly damaging “very, very strong conflict and strife” this winter over high energy prices, and should make a short-term return to fossil fuels to head off the threat of civil unrest, the vice-president of the
has warned.
Frans Timmermans, the second most senior official in the EU, said the threat of unrest this winter, a deliberate outcome of
, must take precedence over the climate crisis.
He said: “If our society descends into very, very strong conflict and strife because there is no energy, we’re certainly not going to make our [climate] goals. We’re certainly not going to get where we need to get if the lack of energy leads to strong disruption in our societies, and we need to make sure people are not in the cold in the coming winter.
“We need to make sure we keep our industry, as much as possible, functioning because the one thing that could help Putin is divisions in our society.”
People suffering from the cold this winter because they cannot afford heating would also be disastrous for solving the climate crisis, Timmermans argued in an interview with the Guardian in Brussels.
“I’ve been in politics long enough, over 30 years, to understand that people worry most about the immediate crisis and not about the long-term crisis And if we don’t address the immediate crisis, we will certainly be off-track with the long-term crisis,” he said.
Timmermans said his goal was to reassure the public of the EU, by 1 November at the latest, that they would not face a crisis in heating their homes this winter.
“I honestly believe that if we can’t give that guarantee then society is on edge, as it is everywhere because of high energy prices, inflation, food prices rising rapidly – because of this uncertainty caused by the war,” he said. “Putin is using all the means he has to create strife in our societies, so we have to brace ourselves for a very difficult period.”
Coal would have to be used, he said. “If we were just to say no more coal right now, we wouldn’t be very convincing in some of our member states and we would contribute to tensions within our society getting even higher.”
Energy prices have soared across the world as a result of the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, but Europe has been particularly badly hit. Before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Germany – the EU’s biggest economy –
for the majority of its gas. Overall, for about 40% of its gas.
