How Germany’s gas crisis is a test of ‘European solidarity’

Germany is “preparing for a hard winter ahead”, said Deutsche Welle (Bonn). Last week, the Russian state energy giant Gazprom closed down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline for ten days of routine maintenance. There are real fears that the pipeline, which transports 55 billion cubic metres of natural gas every year to Germany (more than half of its total usage), may not reopen.

Last month, Russia cut flows to 40% of Nord Stream’s total capacity. It claimed that this was because of sanctions; a crucial turbine being serviced in Canada had not been returned. But the move was generally regarded as a strategy by the Kremlin to put pressure on Berlin over its support for Ukraine. And at the moment, Germany’s gas storage facilities are only 65% full, which is not nearly enough to guarantee supply through the winter.

In Berlin, officials have declared a “gas crisis”, said Patricia Cohen and Melissa Eddy in The New York Times. “Already, landlords, schools and municipalities have begun to lower thermostats, ration hot water, close swimming pools, turn off air-conditioners, dim street lights and exhort the benefits of cold showers.” Germany also faces an imminent recession. Its economy is built on industrial giants that consume vast amounts of imported fuel. The chemical and pharma industries alone use 25% of the nation’s gas supply.

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The coalition government’s reaction does not inspire confidence, said Daniel Gräber in Cicero (Berlin). The economics minister Robert Habeck, from the Green party, lectures us on taking short showers, but wants to press ahead with the phasing out of Germany’s last three nuclear power stations late this year. He argues that the country has a “heating problem, but no electricity problem”, and that “nuclear power doesn’t help at all”. This is “absurd”. If gas becomes scarce in the winter, people will use electric heaters. Taking a reliable, carbon-neutral energy source offline at this moment in time is crazy.

If the gas doesn’t come back on, it will be a major test of Germany’s commitment to Ukraine, said Der Spiegel (Hamburg). It will also be a test of “European solidarity”. Germany is Europe’s main transit hub for gas. Will it still deliver sufficient gas to Slovakia and the Czech Republic, “even if its own industry is suffering”? Or will it allow people further east to freeze while it props up its own economy? Like the euro crisis before it, the gas supply shock has the potential to be a disaster for a “united Europe”.