The single EU policy is to sit together and meet ... no master plan ... deal with it as we go ... running behind the facts on the ground ... the common saying of the Dutch ... in case the world ends, move to the Netherlands, always running 50 years behind 😂

The price of freedom and democracy | 14.03.2022 |

However, we are also seeing significant effects in Europe, with energy and other prices rising and probably set to continue to do so. We, inside the EU, have to accept to pay also a price to stop this outrageous and unprovoked war: the future of our security and our democracies depends on it. The price to pay is the price of freedom.

"The three ways of cutting
our dependence on Russia
are diversification of supplies,
energy efficiency and the
acceleration of renewables."

To prevent asymmetric shocks from weakening the EU, we need to step up our capacity to show solidarity with the most affected countries. This is what we did after the 2008-2009 crisis, even if we were slow to do so. This is also what we need to do now.

The heads of states and government agreed to phase out our dependence on Russian gas, oil and coal imports as soon as possible. It is not possible for us to continue to feed Vladimir Putin's war machine through our energy imports. The Commission will present, by the end of March, a plan to secure our supply in the coming winter season and specify by the end of May the details for the REPower EU plan to end our dependency to fossil fuels imports from Russia.

In parallel, the heads of states and governments will address the impact of rising energy prices on EU citizens and businesses at the next meeting of the European Council on 24-25 March. In particular, we probably need to rethink our wholesale electricity pricing system, which is currently driven for all energy sources by gas prices, even though gas-fired power generation is a very small fraction of the whole.

One emergency meeting follows another as the EU-27 nations and Brussels have smart goals but not the means to arrive without deep scars in society ... the gap between the poor and super wealthy will only surge ... pure capitalism.

'Sapere aude'