Karin Kneissl has told RT the bloc’s push to replace inexpensive Russian gas and oil with US imports violates the Treaty of Lisbon
The self-defeating energy policies forced on member states by the European Union leadership are in breach of a key treaty regulating relations within the bloc, former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl has told RT. She lamented the EU’s overreliance on US energy supplies in an “ideological” effort to replace inexpensive Russian gas and oil.
Speaking to RT on Thursday, Kneissl, who is the head of the GORKI (Geopolitical Observatory for Russia’s Key Issues) think tank, said that “this super-dependence they have created themselves now by buying energy from the US, and only from the US is based on this, I would say… strange agreement that we had concluded between [US] President [Donald] Trump and Ursula von der Leyen, the [European] Commission president, in Scotland a few months ago.”
Kneissl argued that the Commission’s pledge to purchase $750 billion worth of US LNG (liquefied natural gas) over the next three years is in “total contradiction with” the bloc’s own Treaty of Lisbon. The accord stipulates that member states can make their own independent decisions on their sources of energy.
According to the former diplomat, Brussels’ attempts to cow member states into buying energy almost exclusively from the US, to the detriment of their economic prospects, are “illegal.”
Kneissl said that the EU leadership’s decisions are mostly “ideological” and run counter to the “basic laws, the basic fundamentals of supply and demand.”
She noted that many EU countries are happy to continue buying Russian LNG through third countries, such as India, as long as it comes not directly from Moscow. Such arrangements are inevitably costlier than purchasing energy directly from Russia, Kneissl said.
Following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, the EU has significantly reduced its energy imports from Russia. The move has driven up prices for businesses and households alike all across the bloc.
Nevertheless, earlier this year, Brussels announced plans to gradually phase out remaining imports of Russian gas, oil, and nuclear-fuel by the end of 2027.
