The EU is staring into the abyss.

By Romegas

Back in early March – I was insisting not least in the articles I wrote here, that the sanctions imposed by the European Union on the Russian Federation, would far from bringing Russia to its knees prove to be suicidal to Europe’s economies and possibly eventually prove fatal to the ‘European Project’ itself.

In another article, I wrote in early April I openly mocked European MEPs who voted for a full energy blockade of Russia as being totally divorced from reality and compared them to Turkeys voting for Christmas.

Alas what I could already foresee back then is rapidly turning into reality.

In Germany, the powerhouse of Europe, the head of the Bundestag Committee on Energy, Klaus Ernst has now come out to state that the sanctions are nothing other than the equivalent of “Germans slapping their own face to spite Putin” – in the article I cited above I anticipated him by labeling the sanctions to the more expressive if cruder Maltese idiom: taqta’ l-bajd biex tinki l-mara.   

Klaus Ernst and many of his ilk have belatedly realized that they are not harming Putin at all – but simply harming themselves  – he went on to state that without access to cheaper Russian gas, Germany expects a 12% reduction in GDP which will prove as he rightly states to be an ‘absolute catastrophe’.

Indeed Germany has already started a policy of energy rationing. It has been reduced to restricting hot water supply, closing swimming pools, and dimming street lighting. Now in many localities, Germans will only have access to hot water during certain hours.

But it seems, this is nowhere near enough, now the German government is actively considering the idea of paying certain industries to halt production in order to save more important ones from being destroyed. This export-driven nation has registered the first trade deficit since 1991 – let that sink in.

But even this it seems is not to be enough to stave off the inevitable  – faced with the prospect of citizens simply being incapable of paying energy bills that may already reach up to 5,000 Euros or indeed higher, now some German municipalities like Ludwigshafen, terrified of the prospect of this inability by many of the public to face bills have actively started setting up  common heated halls, where citizens can seek refuge this coming winter – instead of freezing to death.

These problems are not consigned solely to Germany, they are systemic and widespread – Farmers in the normally placid and liberal Netherlands have resorted to mass protests and even violence – they are being joined by others in Poland, Germany, and Italy – all protesting against the rise in the prices of fuel and fertilizers – and all making the salient point that without farmers there is no food.

In Lithuania farmers have begun to abandon their tractors and resort to horses.

The future for the EU looks immensely bleak.

Behind the political posturing and virtue signaling of unity, all signs are in place that Europe is about to tear itself apart – this week the Prime Minister of Great Britain who put his self-interest first and used the war in Ukraine for no other reason than to distract from his own domestic political problems and to acquire some desperately needed popularity has had to go. Thanks to this decadent elite Britons are now struggling to survive, facing bills that will wipe out the poor and turn the middle class into paupers. He is the first and won’t certainly be the last to go – as Europe is about to find out in the coming winter of discontent. National interest will always trump deluded supranational ideas propagated by an elite divorced from reality.

Indeed Europe’s salvation was supposed to come from elsewhere – through LNG provided from the US and elsewhere – but now we have not only discovered that there are not enough LNG tankers to go around but also mysteriously, a number of US export terminals are suddenly experiencing fires and other explosions that will restrict the export of US LNG gas to Europe even further –  this has conveniently caused prices of gas in the US to drop by 40% because shutting down export facilities means more gas will be available for internal use and thereby bring the price down.

In the meanwhile, the price of gas in Europe is fast approaching $2,000 per thousand cubic meters and expected to rise much further while the euro fell below $1.01 for the first time in its entire history.

This was not inevitable – this is the consequence of a deluded and incompetent political class for whom we will have to pay the price – but if there is some consolation, it is that they will pay the price too – just as Marie Antoinette did because our deluded political class is only capable of laying the grounds for revolution and mayhem.  

It’s extremely sad, that you have to come here to get a clue of what’s really happening out there around you, that your politicians and mainstream media that prop them up continuously fail to inform you – concerned as they are in their own little bubble of self-delusion. A bubble that is about to be unceremoniously popped.