Russian-Ukrainian crisis puts German “gas” diplomacy in check

The crisis between Russia and Ukraine forces Germany to juggle reducing its dependence on Russian gas, and reveals the failure of its lenient diplomacy towards Putin for more than 20 years.

“absolute failure”, emphasizes the public television channel ARD, while the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung evokes “diplomatic debris fields”.

In question: Berlin’s policy towards Moscow since the beginning of the current millennium due to the fact that 55% of the gas imported by Germany comes from Russia.

All this was shattered on Tuesday when Berlin had no choice but to cancel the authorization for the German-Russian gas pipeline “Nord-Stream 2″, following Moscow’s recognition of the independence of pro-Russian breakaway republics in eastern Ukraine.

Moscow has already imposed a difficult future for Germany in energy matters. “Welcome to a new world, in which Europeans will have to pay 2,000 euros for 1,000 m3 of gas”, warned former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on Tuesday.

strong dependency

Germany is restless: how to do without Russian gas and change more than two decades of energy diplomacy focused on Russia?

Gas represents more than a quarter of their energy consumption and 50% to heat their homes.

“Can” do without Russian gas in the long term, Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck told German public radio.

But giving it up altogether would first cause “a big deficit” to cover in the energy market, whose first consequence would be the “price increase”, he admitted.

These are already very high. According to the German Statistics Office, they increased by 32.2% year-on-year in January. Explosive situation that arouses growing discontent among German consumers and weakens the leading economy in the euro zone.

“The rise in gas prices threatens to suffocate the economy the situation is so serious to the point that medium-sized companies are considering relocation”, according to the industrial lobby BDI.

To face the situation, the country is betting on a drop in demand in the short term, thanks to milder temperatures as winter draws to a close.

And, in the medium term, for Germany it is about changing suppliers, building terminals for LNG and transporting liquefied gas by sea from Qatar, the United States or Canada.

diplomacy on the bench

This situation is a consequence of policies adopted by successive governments, which have pampered their relations with Moscow in the last two decades.

Berlin wanted to simultaneously secure its gas supply and thereby promote the democratization of Russia, a policy baptized in Germany with the slogan: “exchange through trade”.

This strategy, started by the social democrat Gerhard Schröder –closely linked to the Russian gas sector– continued with the conservative Angela Merkel.

With “Nord-Stream 2″, actively supported by the former chancellor, Germany’s gas dependence on Moscow would increase to 70%, according to experts.

Berlin’s policy towards Moscow was Merkel’s “fatal mistake”, says Bild, the most widely read newspaper in Germany.

“The best thing would have been not to build ‘Nord-Stream 2″, Habeck asserted, qualifying “error” the diplomacy regarding the previous government.

The environmentalist Annalena Baerbock, head of German diplomacy, has corrected the course of foreign policy, supporting it in “the defense of values” democratic and less in economic interests.

By prioritizing theclimate protection”, Berlin faces the energy transition to eliminate its dependence on imported fossil fuels.

But, there is an obstacle, and it is that to achieve it, paradoxically it would have to consume more gas, by eliminating nuclear energy, scheduled for the end of the year, and coal, by 2030.