A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) said that while some problems were inherited from the Angela Merkel era, the German government under Chancellor Olaf Scholz has mishandled “everything” during the energy crisis, resulting in economic calamity for Europe’s leading economy.
The doubling down on the green agenda and the sudden attempt to radically reduce reliance on Russian energy by the government of Social Democrat leftist Olaf Scholz over the past year have been “disastrous” for the German economy, Dr Gunnar Beck MEP said in an exclusive interview with Breitbart London.
“They have been in government for a good year now and everything seems to have been mishandled. Of course, they inherited a particular situation, Germany has been very dependent on Russian gas supplies for years now and it was Mrs Merkel who negotiated this,” he said.
“Now that we are trying to phase out Russian gas and other fossil fuels, it’s a disaster, because we have no energy security — Russia provided that — and prices for any possible substitutes, notably American LNG (liquid natural gas) are around four times as high compared to Russian gas.
“So for consumers, households, and for our industry, that’s a disaster. Inflation has been rising, it’s been a disaster all around.”
The German MEP said that it was a mistake by the government to immediately try to cut supplies of gas from Russia, arguing that Germany should have followed Hungary’s lead in acknowledging the dependence and dealing with that reality rather than risking an “economic crisis” by attempting to radically reduce supplies.
Last month, a declassified document from four months prior to the February invasion of Ukraine revealed that the German government of Angela Merkel — in which current chancellor Olaf Scholz served as finance minister — believed that increasing dependency on Russian gas through the opening of the now-scuppered Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline would “not jeopardise” Germany’s energy security.
This has not turned out to be the case, with the gas crisis wiping off tens of billions of euros from the German economy, the country already rationing their energy use, and citizens even cutting back on Christmas celebrations to reduce costs.
Dr Beck went on to lay blame for the country’s current predicament on decades of green agenda policies, in particular the decision by former chancellor Angela Merkel to phase out all nuclear power in Germany following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.
While the energy crisis has forced the Scholz government to extend the life of the country’s three remaining reactors, they are still set to be shut down — without replacement — by next April.
“We are dependent on gas, not just for heating but also for electricity generation. If we had kept our nuclear industry, which at the time nearly 20 years ago was about the most modern in Europe, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” the German MEP suggested.
“Climate and energy policies pursued over the last two decades have been disastrous. France, which has kept its nuclear reactors and is now launching a programme of building many more, is in a much more secure position.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka