'Leaked' EU Draft 'Emergency Planning' Docs Reveal the Commission's Power Grab

Since we’re already (sic) talking the EU’s evolution (sic), here’s some more old news™ by German legacy media—given the time elapsed in-between, it reads more more like predictive programming—about the EU Commission’s draft emergency planning with respect to member-states’ gas futures.

Gas Follies Breed 'A New Alliance' (Robert Habeck) between Austria, Czechia, and Germany--to Create a New Model for Europe

As I tried to explain in the above-linked posting, the EU Commission has these powers courtesy of a regulation promulgated in 2017. All that is required is two (or more) member-states stating so. As per Art. 12 (1) of the Regulation (EU) 2017/1938:

The Commission may declare a regional or Union emergency at the request of a competent authority that has declared an emergency…

The Commission shall declare, as appropriate, a regional or Union emergency at the request of at least two competent authorities that have declared an emergency

So, back in the above-linked posting (dated 15 June 2022), I wrote these lines:

So, there you have it: the EU Commission ‘may declare’ something, if one member-state declares an emergency.

Yet, the Commission ‘shall declare’—i.e., will do it—if two or more member-states declare an emergency.

So, on this bright summer morrow, here’s what the German Press Agency (Deutsche Presse-Agentur, or DPA), has learned about Brussels’ plans, which was published overnight at 3:15 a.m. in many German-language outlets. The below version is from the Handelsblatt (source here; my emphases):

‘To act now can reduce the impact of a sudden supply disruption by a third’, the text, obtained by Deutsche Presse-Agentur, reads. There is now a ‘significant risk’ that Russia will entirely stop gas deliveries to Europe this year, it says.

Companies that can replace gas should reduce their consumption, [the draft] says. The aim is to protect industries that are particularly important for supply chains and competitiveness while households are also being urged to voluntarily use less. ‘Everyone can save gas, now’, the commission writes.

Rules already in place stipulate that in the event of a gas shortage, households and hospitals, for example, would be prioritised. However, if electricity production is at risk, countries can put gas-fired power plants in charge of supplying electricity over certain protected consumers, it says. The plan is still subject to change and is expected to be officially presented next Wednesday (20 July).

So, here we see the ‘true colours’ of the EU and its (neo)liberal marketeer fantasies: first, the Commission mandated the ‘unbundling’ (separation) of energy production, transportation, and sales to enable ‘market forces’ to break through the maze of red tape and, crucially, to destroy the final frontier of member-states’ sovereignty: energy.

You see, energy supply was the one item that, so far, has never been ‘devolved’ upon EU institutions in Brussels. Foreign and security policy: check. Agricultural subsidies: check (even before the EU came into being in the early 1990s). Even a ‘common EU Army’ or the like has been seriously discussed for decades, yet: energy policy? No way.

Until now.

Here’s the rest of the Handelsblatt piece, by the way:

Simulations by the regulator ENTSO-G have shown, according to the [leaked draft] text, that a supply stop in July would mean that the gas storage facilities could not be sufficiently filled and thus there could still be shortages in winter as well as next year. If a disruption came in October or later, there would be less risk to winter demand. But there would be less time to react. The impact on member-states would depend on how dependent they are on Russian gas, they say. Germany is one of the countries most affected.

According to the EU Commission, gas supplies from Russia have already been drastically reduced. Overall, gas flows are now less than 30% of the 2016 to 2021 average, the draft says. This has led to historically high energy prices and pushed up inflation, it said. There are no indications that the situation will improve. Rather, it will worsen.

Oh, what a ‘surprise’: all of the above is entirely understandable and was ‘predicted’ by certain Substackers and many other people many moons ago, like, you know, via a quite simple analytical ‘model’ that involves the juxtaposition of ‘cause’ and ‘effect’, as well as careful reflection (take that, ‘market analysts’ and journalists who are pretending to be ‘surprised’ these days).

Bottom Lines

Remember: none of this was unforeseen, or unforeseeable. In fact, these gas futures—or the lack thereof—where entirely ‘baked into’ the system many decades ago when, in the late 1960s, Western politicians, first among them Austrians, began importing (then-Soviet, and now Russian) hydrocarbon energy as a stop-gap measure to avoid the painful truth about post-WW2 economic growth:

Growing manufacturing output, which produces rising levels of prosperity for the masses, requires reliable and, above all, cheap energy inputs (throughputs).

The ‘limits to growth’ of post-WW2 Western economies were reached in the 1960s, and the only way forward—that is, a path that didn’t result in a lowering of economic output—was deemed to be the importation of external supplies of energy in the form of Soviet/Russian natural gas.

For background (and linked sources to the below quotes), please see:

Energy as 'Soft Power': an (A)Morality Tale About How 'Europe' Became Dependent on Russian Hydrocarbons

Back in the 1960s, Rudolf Schaffer, spokesman of the Austrian Mineral Oil Administration (OMV) went on the record like this:

Until then, domestic consumption was necessarily limited by domestic production. If enough imported gas becomes available, however, consumption will increase.

Today, about 80% of the natural gas that is consumed in Austria comes from Russia, 10% from other countries, and 10% from domestic production.

From 1968 onwards, as a translated ORF media piece held,

restrictions on the supply of gas to consumers are off the table, ÖMV Director General Ludwig Bauer told the Austrian Press Agency at the time.

So, there it is in a nutshell: as the rest of non-Russian Europe has doubled and quadrupled down on Austria’s pioneering trail to substitute anything resembling living in reality from the 1960s onwards, we’re now facing the inevitable consequences of our collective rush to madness.

It may (or may not) be that the tide of Russian gas supplies is receding this summer, and then we’ll see who’s actually wearing a swimsuit.

While I decried the pain and suffering this will cause, let us all remember that this is the standard operating procedure of Western (U.S.-led) ‘marketeering’ outside the ‘International Community’.

Somehow, it’s perhaps ironic—or righteous retribution for our collective hubris, for which the ancients had a telling name: Nemesis—that it will be Westerners who shall suffer that same fate.

I suppose that the situation will get worse, perhaps even a lot so, before it may (or may not) get better again.

I do take a quantum of solace in the fact that no Western country is actually capable of militarily securing energy supplies, that is, if one wishes to exclude nuclear Armageddon.

So, I wish to conclude this piece on a somewhat more cheerful (ahem) note: while the arsonists running the shitshow that masquerades as U.S. foreign policy (ahem) are apparently having wet dreams about incinerating Russia with nukes—and this also means a quite elevated risk of such escalation, I fear, if ‘only’ because there are no conventional means available to ‘defeat Moscow’—this would be suicidal for all of humanity.