Can Qatar blackmail the EU and Germany? Of course, who becomes a sheep, the wolf eats him…
Today the newspapers are full of threats from Qatar to make supplies of liquefied natural gas to Europe more problematic. We threaten the world's second largest LNG producer, expel him from the European Parliament on charges of being a corruptor, we cannot expect this to have no repercussions on European energy security.
The problem is very simple: Euractiv reports that, according to a statement released by a diplomatic representative of the Qatari government, the Belgian authorities acted on the basis of "inaccurate" information in their investigations regarding the Persian Gulf country's responsibilities in the corruption involving former Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Eva Kaili. Prosecutors said they suspected a Gulf state was trying to influence European Parliament decisions, but they never named the state. Only informal sources, even if informed, spoke of Qatar, however "Any association of the Qatari government with the reported claims is baseless and grossly misinformed," a Qatari government source said at the time.
Now, the Qatari government statement says that the Gulf State rejects all allegations of involvement in the corruption scheme and notes that "Qatar was not the only party named in the investigation, yet our country was exclusively criticized and attacked”, and threatened repercussions on the gas agreements.
The EU now presents itself as an association for the development of economic masochism. Create a dependency on a supplier and an energy source, then kick it and break the relationship. First Russia, then, months later, Qatar. It seems incredible the planning incapacity of the European leadership which behaves more and more like a dazed hen, prey to its own daily fashions. Who will pay for this move, which is perceived as a diplomatic offense? Almost all the European countries that receive 15% of their liquefied gas, on average, from Qatar, but above all Germany, which has concluded a 15-year agreement for the supply of two million tons of natural gas liquid.
The Brussels authorities manage to combine an extreme ideological rigidity, impervious to the "reason of state" that has guided diplomacy for centuries, with a moral softness that allows foreign states to use even legitimate lobbying activities to influence their decisions. Too much power has been concentrated in overly centralized bodies removed from popular control, and this has been an epochal mistake.
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The article Can Qatar blackmail the EU and Germany? Sure, the sheep gets eaten, the wolf eats it… it comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-qatar-puo-ricattare-la-ue-e-la-germania-certo-chi-pecora-si-fa-il-lupo-se-lo-mangia/ on Mon, 19 Dec 2022 13:00:14 +0000.