EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager spoke on Tuesday about the reasons for Europe’s dependence on Russian energy, with her claiming that “greed” was the primary reason.
According to the Brussels official, the Europeans were greedy when they accepted that Russia would be responsible for a large part of their energy supply.
“We were not naive, we were greedy. Our industry was built around Russian energy, mainly because it was cheap,” the European Commissioner told French business daily Les Echos.
“There was a big risk — an addiction — that we are paying now,” Vestager added.
The EU official emphasized that in this case the attitude of the Europeans was similar “to that of China for many products or Taiwan for chips, where we went primarily to find lower production costs.”
In the context of the situation in the war in Ukraine, the European Commissioner considers that, from now on, “we will have to pay a security premium,” especially relying on liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is more expensive but could offer “stability and predictability, which will lead to investment.”
With regard to the EU’s plan to reduce dependence on Russia, Vestager said that the countries that rely most on Russian gas must be provided with other sources of supply.
