Europe must avoid becoming too dependent on U.S. energy supplies, Germany’s outgoing economy minister Robert Habeck cautioned on Jan. 21, which comes amid President Donald Trump’s demands that the European Union (EU) buy enough American oil and gas to make up for the U.S. trade deficit with the EU—or face tariffs.
Habeck, a member of Germany’s Green Party, said at the Handelsblatt energy summit in Berlin on Jan. 21 that relying too much on U.S. energy supplies risks repeating the same type of “blackmail that we had in Russia.”
Europe’s high degree of reliance on Russian energy constrained the region’s ability to respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with forceful sanctions like cutting energy ties entirely to starve Moscow of revenues, which have bolstered the Kremlin’s war chest….