Who Pays for the Crisis
European Union countries must funnel their energy aid chiefly to vulnerable households and industries or risk wasting billions of euros as the Iran war drives up oil and gas prices, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned on Wednesday. The warning lands where these decisions always land: on ordinary people, who face higher prices at the pumps and the prospect of a jet fuel shortage within weeks while the bloc’s leaders try to manage the fallout from a war and a market system they do not control.
The U.S.-Israel war, combined with retaliation from Iran such as choking the Strait of Hormuz, is costing the EU almost 500 million euros ($600 million) a day, according to the article. That daily drain is already feeding into the cost of fuel and the broader insecurity of supply, with the burden pushed downward onto households, workers, and industries that depend on energy to keep daily life moving.
What the Commission Wants
Von der Leyen told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, France, that the bloc must draw on the lessons of the 2022 fuel crisis, when Russia used its energy might against European countries to undermine their support for Ukraine, to avoid further hurting their economies. More than 350 billion euros were spent on untargeted measures during that crisis, and she said this had a huge impact on member states finances. Her answer is not to break the power of the system that keeps producing these shocks, but to better target the damage control.
“So let us not make the same mistake again, and let’s focus our support where it matters most,” von der Leyen said. The line is a neat summary of the reform trap: the same institutions that preside over dependence, price shocks, and emergency spending now promise smarter management of the fallout.
She also said the bloc must end its reliance on supplies from outside the world by making better use of renewable sources like wind and solar, as well as nuclear power. “Our over dependency on imported fossil fuels makes us vulnerable,” she said. Von der Leyen added that the impact of the Iran war “may echo for months or even years to come” and that the path to energy independence lies in “homegrown, affordable, clean energy supply from renewables to nuclear.”
The System’s Narrow Choices
Von der Leyen urged EU countries to use more electricity generated by renewable sources and nuclear sources to power transport and planes, heat homes, and undercut the dependency on fossil fuels in industry. But electricity makes up less than a quarter of the bloc’s energy consumption, a reminder that the apparatus is still built around the very fuel chains now shaking it.
The article says that since the war started in 2022, Russian gas imports into the 27 nations have fallen from 45% to 12% last year. Coal imports were banned by sanctions, and oil imports shrank from 27% in 2022 to 2%, with only Hungary and Slovakia continuing to buy from Russia. Those figures show how quickly energy dependence becomes a political weapon when states and markets are entangled in the same hierarchy of supply.
EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen warned last week that the Iran war has not just produced “a short-term, small increase in prices. This is a crisis that is probably as serious as the 1973 and the 2022 crises combined.” He said Europe has been forced onto the defensive and has little control over events. Jørgensen said, “Even in a best-case scenario, it’s still bad,” and added, “Whether or not we will be in a security of supply crisis is primarily a result of what goes on in the Middle East. What we can do is to try and prevent, and limit” the damage.
That is the language of managed helplessness: the bloc admits it is reacting to events shaped elsewhere, while ordinary people absorb the costs through higher prices, tighter supplies, and another round of official crisis management.