In the shadow of the fuel crisis: How green is the EU response to energy prices?

Actually everything was planned seamlessly. Getting Europe’s economy back on track has long been at the top of the list of topics in Brussels this week. Less bureaucracy, more economic cooperation in a finally completed internal market and cheap energy for industry. But the explosion in oil and natural gas prices as a result of the attacks on Iran leaves no room for long-term plans. The meeting of EU energy ministers on Monday and the summit of heads of state and government on Thursday are overshadowed by the increasingly hectic search for a quick response to the acute energy crisis. “We have to provide a solution now”EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen makes it clear what this Brussels week is about: “How can we reduce energy costs for citizens again?”

Back to Russian gas?

But the more nervous decision-makers become, under pressure from citizens and industry at home, the further opinions and political concerns drift apart. The tanker blockade in the Strait of Hormuz is raising concerns about a return to natural gas and oil from Russia. While it was previously only the demonstratively pro-Russian governments of Hungary and Slovakia that tried to squeeze supplies from Russia from the EU, Belgium’s head of government Bart de Wever is now also speaking out: “We need to quickly normalize relations with Russia so that we can regain access to cheap energy. That’s simply sensible.” Many European politicians would secretly agree with him anyway, the Belgian told the French magazine “Le Echos”. In fact, top Austrian politicians have also been lobbying behind the scenes in Brussels to reopen the pipelines from Russia as soon as a ceasefire has been concluded.

The green rules should be dropped

But Europe’s political heavyweights are setting their sights on a different target this week: the climate protection rules of the EU’s Green Deal. Above all, Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni want to bring down a central pillar of this Green Deal: trading in climate protection certificates, or ETS for short.

Companies have to buy these certificates to compensate for their carbon dioxide emissions. But so far, so many of them have been generously distributed for free that they were in abundance and therefore cheap. At the end of the year, the generous practice came to an end, prices rose rapidly – and politicians went to the barricades. If Merz or Meloni have officially only demanded a return to free certificates and their own brake on gas prices, negotiators have long since gone further in the talks before the summit: There is even talk of the end of ETS trading. Other EU states such as the Netherlands or Sweden, which have already invested large sums in the climate-friendly conversion of their industry, warn against such a step backwards: abolishing the ETS would lead to a collapse of climate protection.