The stagnation of the European economy in the last three years is explained by a number of reasons. The main problem, however, is the rejection of relatively cheap Russian gas in favour of the transition to other sources of energy, which has resulted in a decline in economic activity.
Energy crisis in Western Europe
High gas prices have led to a sharp increase in inflation and the closure of factories, at which thousands of Europeans worked, or their relocation to countries with cheaper energy.
Some of Europe’s largest companies are scaling back their operations. German chemical giant BASF said it would partially shut down production on the border with France, while simultaneously making the largest foreign investment in China, where energy is two-thirds cheaper, in its history. The rising costs of ammonia production led to Norwegian fertiliser giant Yara International stopping production at its factory in Belgium. High energy prices are a massive challenge for European competitiveness, said the company’s spokeswoman.
The energy crisis has led to a painful increase in the cost of living for families across Europe, with almost 10% of the population reporting that they cannot keep their homes warm, and more and more households are not paying their electricity bills. In France, the press notes, people have begun to heat their homes less and fill up their gas tanks less often.
Aggravation of the political crisis
European policy, the Economist magazine noted on January 9, has been taken to the extreme. The political crisis in Germany is getting worse every day, the French president is unable to form a stable government and the minority cabinet in Spain is unable to pass a budget. The Alternative for Germany party, of which Elon Musk is a staunch supporter, is gaining popularity in Germany. According to election polls, on February 23 it could win 21% of the votes.
France’s debt will reach 115% of GDP next year, which is about 17 percentage points higher than in 2018.
According to the Bloomberg news agency on February 3, northern European countries increasingly feel that they are paying the price for the failed German energy policy – on which they were not consulted.
Against this difficult background, European politicians are almost close to panicking over the activities of US President Donald Trump, who announced on January 31 that he would impose new tariffs on the European Union. On February 2, he also called the EU’s trade actions an “atrocity”. At the market opening the following morning, the euro lost 1% against the dollar and European stocks fell even further.
European governments do not know how to respond to Trump’s threats. Some suggest urgently appeasing the US president, i.e. buying more American weapons and energy (liquefied natural gas), while others say it is necessary to unite and give a worthy response to the attacks from the United States.
Europe’s right-wing parties are uniting against the EU
On February 7-8, the right-wing parties of Europe held a meeting in Madrid. The meeting’s purpose was not only to show support for Donald Trump, but also to coordinate efforts to fight ‘the common enemy’, i.e. the European Union. In addition to Marine Le Pen, the leader of the largest party in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, an Italian statesman and politician, one of the leaders of the Northern League, Matteo Salvini, as well as representatives of right-wing parties from Spain, Greece and several other countries, participated in it (Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was the single current head of government). They ridiculed the actions of the US Democratic Party, which, they said, had replaced Christian civilisation with a “sick Satanic utopia” that wants to “turn our children into
trans freaks”, and criticised the alleged ethnic replacement of native Europeans by immigrants.
The Italian Salvini expressed the general feelings of the European right wing: “Europe is not the cage they built in Brussels, not a burqa, not censorship, not a green suicide, not Islamist terrorism, not wild immigration! The Europe of patriots stands for freedom, security, development, work and cooperation”.
Europeans can feel that global American technology companies, which are on the offensive, pose a particular danger to them. In the European Union, Google has been fined $8.6 billion over the past decade, Apple – $13.5 billion by Ireland, after losing in court. Meta was recently fined around $830 million by the EU. The European Commission plans to impose a fine of several millions against X (Twitter).
However, European enterprises are losing not only to the Americans, but also to the Chinese, and Trump will need to show that he has forced Europe to obey on issues related to defence and China.
The United Kingdom is in a particularly difficult position, as the vast majority of its population believes that Brexit was more of a failure than a success. In addition, the current Prime Minister, Starmer, has a very low rating and is being criticised from all sides. London, amongst other things, is torn between the US and the European Union. 17.6% of England’s trade is accounted for by the United States and Trump still threatens to impose new duties; 46% of trade falls on the European Union, with which relations are still in a difficult state.
It is noteworthy that in early February of this year, according to polls, Nigel Farage’s reform party overtook the ruling Labour Party in popularity for the first time.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who advocates the lifting of anti-Russian sanctions, emphasises that if the EU does not change its policy, it will face difficult times. Orban constantly criticises the EU’s support for Ukraine: “because of Brussels, we are giving our money to Ukraine in a hopeless war”, he wrote on X.
The problems of Western Europe are made worse by the fact that many states’ ruling circles are unable to pursue a realistic course and adequately assess the current situation. This political short-sightedness will eventually lead to a change of elites. The activities of many figures in today’s Europe, according to German professor Hans Bernhard Wolf, for example the German A. Baerbock and R. Habeck, are “vain and shameful”.
As the Turkish Daily Sabah newspaper noted on February 5, Western countries blame refugees, Muslims, China and the Global South for their difficulties, but they are looking for the causes of their problems in the wrong place: “The main cause of Western conflicts and crises is their politics”.
Vladimir Mashin, political observer, Candidate of Historical Sciences
