“Either pay or freeze” – Article by Giorgos T. Georgiou, AKEL Political Bureau member

 

Sunday 18 September 2022, “Haravgi” newspaper

The situation across the EU isn’t good. The great financial banking crisis of the last decade, which was never overcome, was followed by the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which only exacerbated the already existing energy crisis. Inflation is on the rise, so is the public debt of EU member states and of the Union itself, energy poverty is threatening thousands of households, and so is the food crisis.

All this has a name: it is called a crisis of the capitalist system itself and of the so-called “free market”, whose magic solutions have expired. Neither the warmongering slogans, nor the meaningless sanctions, nor the half-measures, and with great delay, proposed by the European Commission, provide solutions to the existing problems. Now criticism is being exerted from within, via the most official institutional channel. Charles Michel, President of the European Council, apparently representing many others, has made a scathing admission: “The European Commission has wasted time…The States are in the process of impoverishment. Citizens are suffering, companies are suffering, states are suffering, and some energy companies are making super profits.”

Unfortunately, he is right. The price of electricity has risen sharply by 300% and the cost of gas has increased up to 12 times. The alternatives proposed by the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen are both costly and dangerous: there are not enough storage facilities for the expensive American LNG, the return of nuclear power threatens the environment and people’s health, and so is coal. So there goes the notorious ‘Green Transition’, which was in essence throwing billions into the hands of business circles by constituting a “Green Capitalism”.

Ursula von der Leyen has stated her intention to support households and limit the profiteering speculation of energy-producing companies. She did not tell us how she would actually do this and when. Other than that, she was content with a lot of euphemisms: the need to reinvest in cleaner energy from the profits of oil companies, regulation of the energy market, the need to reduce gas prices, the further expansion of renewable energy, the need to produce renewable hydrogen by 2030.

All of these statements without any specific planning and implementation timetables. The only thing she formally insisted on was to place the main responsibility for overcoming the energy crisis on the peoples. She puts the responsibility on the people’s backs and basically tells them either “pay up or freeze…”

And yet there are solutions. Radical taxation of super profits, a shift to renewables through substantive public investment, the use of part of the revenues collected from the emissions trading scheme, substantial support measures for households and small and medium-sized enterprises through the imposition of a cap on energy prices while reducing VAT on electricity. There is even the need to exploit energy sources in the Eastern Mediterranean. All this must ensure energy as a public social good, easily accessible to those who need it.

Winter is looming ominously, the supposed…invincible capitalist weapons of “self-regulation” have failed miserably. It is time for bold political decisions to be taken on the part of the Union and member states. People must take precedence over profits with blood on their hands.