Energy Crisis: Green New Deal Politics Making ‘Poor People Poorer’ – MEP

Romanian MEP Cristian Terhes at a press conference in February 2022 (Credit Hermann Kelly)
Hermann Kelly
Peter Caddle

The EU’s Green New Deal-style politics have made the bloc’s poor people even poorer while funding Russia’s war in Ukraine, an MEP has claimed.

European Parliament member Cristian Terhes of the centre-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group hit out at those ruling the political bloc, claiming that the union’s Green New Deal-style politics are the main cause of the current crippling energy crisis which is making “poor people poorer”.

Terhes went on to demand that the union make itself energy independent, and properly utilise the continent’s own natural resources instead of buying from Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

According to Terhes, the European Union had been warned multiple times by experts for years that their Green New Deal-style politics would lead to cost increases for food, goods and services, with such increases likely to disproportionately affect Europe’s poorest.

However, the Romanian MEP argues that these experts were largely ignored, with the likes of then-schoolgirl Greta Thunberg gaining prominence and the ear of European elites.

“There were many experts — and when I say experts, I mean real experts, not ideologues like Greta Thunberg — who said that… if the Green Deal — in the way it is proposed and envisioned by the European Commission —  [is] put into law, it will cause an economic chaos in the European Union,” the Romanian MEP said.

“Unfortunately, nobody paid attention to those experts,” he continued. “They were raising concerns since 2020 that the price of energy was going to go up, the price of food was going to go up [and] that products and services done in the EU will be uncompetitive on the global market.”

Terhes went on to note that the various policies being pushed for by the European Union were having a disproportionate effect on poorer people and countries within the bloc, noting that Brussels’ current green policies have required Romania to scrap thousands of megawatts of energy generation via coal plants, with the country having nothing to replace it with.

Again, the Romanian MEP claims that experts had warned the Union about the problems these policies would create, but that they were not listened to.

“They all said that if this law is implemented the way it is proposed, it will make poor people poorer, and it will undermine the European economy,” the MEP said.

“And what do we see [in 2022]?” he continued. “We see higher energy prices everywhere… that are hitting right now the most vulnerable Europeans, but this was something that was raised since 2019-2020.”

What’s more, while the Romanian politician was keen to emphasize that these problems existed “before the war in Ukraine”, he also claimed that the problem had actually helped lead to the Ukraine conflict, attributing part of the blame for the war to the EU due to the fact the union had been paying so much for imported energy from the Russian Federation.

“Europe can and must be energy independent,” the ECR group member argued. “But clearly what [the EU has] done so far is not the right solution, because everything that they’ve done… [has been] paying for Putin’s war machine.”

“With the money provided by the European Union to Russia, Putin is able to conduct this war of aggression in Ukraine,” he continued, noting that €850 million is paid to Russia per day by European countries for natural gas.

To rectify this, Terhes called for the European Union to make itself energy independent by utilising the natural resources already within the bloc’s borders, saying that it would not make sense to do otherwise.

“In order for the EU to become energy independent we have to rely on our own sources of energy that we already have in Europe,” he said. “Why are we not using the sources of energy that we already have here?”

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