The bloc will wean itself off the country’s natural gas, but it won’t happen overnight, says Josep Borrell
The EU will wean itself off natural gas supplied by Russia in the coming years, the bloc’s foreign policy chief said on Thursday.
Speaking to Television Espanola, Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, said EU members had come to the conclusion that they were too dependent on Russian gas .
“First it will be coal, then… oil… but it will take longer to [phase out Russian] gas, because you have to adapt, you can’t go from 40% to 0% overnight,” he said. “And Russia knows that we will stop buying its gas.”
“Russia wants to sell its gas, but not necessary for us“, Borrell added, urging EU member states to voluntarily reduce their energy consumption so that authorities do not have to apply mandatory restrictions.
The EU diplomat also said the bloc had already made efforts to cut Russian gas. “We have already started saving Russian gas,” he noted.”Reducing the average heating temperature in Europe by one degree is equivalent to saving 6% of gas.”
According to Borrell, before the conflict in Ukraine broke out, Europe imported around 40% of its natural gas from Russia, but that figure has now fallen to around 20%.
“We approved almost all [sanctions on Russia] that we could have,” he said. “But the situation with gas is the opposite; the fact is not that we don’t want to buy it, the fact is that [Russia] can refuse to sell it to us.”
Earlier this week, EU countries agreed to reduce their gas consumption in anticipation of a possible complete shutdown of supplies from Russia. The contingency plan will see member states voluntarily reduce their natural gas consumption by 15% between August 2022 and the end of March 2023. By adopting the controversial scheme, EU members hope it will mitigate the impact if Moscow decides to stop deliveries.
Although the plan sparked some protests within the bloc, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen defended it, saying the EU “must be prepared for the worst case scenariowhile describing Moscow asnot a reliable partner for Europe’s energy supply.”
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EU’s Borrell has ‘no chance’ against Lavrov – Moscow
Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed speculation about Moscow’s intentions to cut gas supplies to the EU. Despite strained relations between Moscow and Brussels over Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, Gazprom is “ready to pump as much as needed,“but it is the EU that has”closed all themselves,” he said.
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