{"id":668554,"date":"2026-07-01T20:35:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T20:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/668554\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T20:35:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T20:35:14","slug":"restoring-energy-ties-with-russia-wont-save-germanys-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/668554\/","title":{"rendered":"Restoring energy ties with Russia won\u2019t save Germany\u2019s economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an interview<\/a> with Reuters this week, Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel made it clear that in a government run by her party, restoring energy ties with Russia would be a priority. \u201cCheap energy from Russia was the secret of the success of \u2018Made in Germany\u2019,\u201d she claimed, referring to the nation\u2019s famed industrial strength. \u201cWe need it back.\u201d Weidel added that \u201cthe loss of this energy has set us back years. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost. It has made us dependent on the United States, which sells us energy at far higher prices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the latter claim is demonstrably true \u2014 Russian pipeline gas has been replaced<\/a> by liquefied natural gas, mostly from the USA, with far higher transportation costs \u2014 Weidel has been accused<\/a> of the \u201cromanticization of Russia\u201d. The criticism sticks; although Weidel is right about the harmful short-term effects on Germany of cutting off Russian energy, Europe\u2019s nationalists are increasingly gripped by a Russia nostalgia that threatens to blind them to the true causes of the continent\u2019s industrial malaise.<\/p>\n

Weidel\u2019s characterization of Russian energy as the secret of German success before the Ukraine war only tells half the story. The nation got hooked<\/a> on cheap Russian gas as a \u201cbridge fuel\u201d on the road to Net Zero, amid the shuttering<\/a> of European coal production and Germany\u2019s remarkable act of national self-harm in phasing out<\/a> nuclear energy. Cheap Russian gas did not birth Germany\u2019s industrial miracle, as Weidel\u2019s claim suggests; it kept German industry on life support amid a climate of continuous political sabotage.<\/p>\n

Now that the safety net of Russian gas has vanished, the effects are plain to see. Having imported 55%<\/a> of its natural gas and over 30% of its crude oil<\/a> from Russia before the war, average wholesale electricity prices<\/a> remain at least twice as high as those seen during the previous decade, driving inflation and redundancies, with 124,000 German industrial sector job losses reported in 2025<\/a>. And it\u2019s not just heavy industry that\u2019s in trouble; German households pay<\/a> around a third more for electricity than the EU average.<\/p>\n

The fact that Germany generates more wind and solar power than any other EU nation will be of cold comfort to businesses struggling to make ends meet. Heavy manufacturers, in particular, aren\u2019t just saddled with higher energy prices; they must also pay hefty sums for emissions allowances, or if they want to escape those fees, upgrade to ruinously expensive low-carbon equipment.<\/p>\n

Dependency on Russia was, then, the result of a wider attitude to energy which continues to pose systemic obstacles to growth. Given this context, Weidel\u2019s portrayal of Russian energy imports as a silver bullet for industrial woes is overly simplistic. It\u2019s even arguable that Europe\u2019s hostile energy climate, devastating though it may be, isn\u2019t the biggest problem facing manufacturers. Equally serious are an uncompetitive labor market and a regulatory burden that stifles growth, leaving Europe unable to compete with the USA and China on developing innovative technologies, as the Draghi report<\/a> attests. It\u2019s therefore unsurprising that Volkswagen last week<\/a> shocked Germany with plans for an astounding 100,000 redundancies \u2014 roughly 15% of its workforce \u2014 and the closure of four German factories.<\/p>\n

Europe has deep structural competitiveness issues to fix on energy, labor markets and regulation, but Russian energy has become the forbidden fruit of EU politics: the more tempting to anti-establishment forces for the fact that it is banned. An out-of-touch elite can be portrayed as having cruelly outlawed an obvious cure for the bloc\u2019s industrial woes. Every furious backlash from EU leaders against suggestions that ties with the Kremlin should be restored only lends this misleading message further potency, and the deeper Europe descends into economic malaise, the louder the siren song of Russian energy will sound to European ears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In an interview with Reuters this week, Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel made it clear that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[223896,84,1294,1344,4034,591,145,154,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-668554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-afd","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-energy","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-germany","tag-russia","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}