Insight
State of the Union: The EU, three months into Putin’s war by Camino Mortera-Martinez, 24 May 2022 Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shifted priorities and frayed alliances in the EU. It has also created winners and losers in Brussels. It has been exactly three months since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, triggering courageous and unexpectedly successful resistance from the Ukrainian people. Putin’s war has shaken things up in Brussels, with both the EU institutions and the member-states responding nimbly. But now the EU’s unity is starting to wear thin. The war has had a massive impact on four policy areas: energy, EU enlargement, the economy, and defence and security. But it has had a surprisingly limited effect on two difficult files: rule of law and migration. Hitherto unbreakable friendships, such as Hungary and Poland’s, have become strained; and for the first time in more than a decade, EU countries cannot look to Germany for leadership. The German president of the European Commission, however, is having a comparatively good war. Of the four challenges facing the EU, energy is the most urgent, while enlargement is probably the trickiest. The economic consequences of the war for Europe, including rapidly rising costs of living, while dire, in some ways echo problems that the EU has dealt with before – particularly during its rather successful management of the economic fall-out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The supply of weapons to Ukraine has been an extraordinary tour de force for the EU, but did not come out of the blue: the Union had been preparing for a situation where it might want to do more than its usual military assistance measures. The European Peace Facility, a little known pot of money that allows the EU to supply weapons to other countries at a short notice, has been operational since July 2021. Energy The question of how to rapidly extricate Europe from its dependence on Russian oil and gas is as pressing as it is complicated: since the war began, Europe has paid more than €58 billion to Russia for oil and gas. Because of soaring energy prices, the EU is paying a premium of around 54 per cent for Russian fossil fuels in comparison to 2021. Revenues from fossil fuels account for a significant chunk of Russia’s public budget (40 per cent at 2021 prices), so EU payments for oil and gas are not only helping Putin to fund
CER INSIGHT: State of the Union: The EU, three months into Putin’s war 24 May 2022
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