![The European Union's High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell. The](https://www.news360.es/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/fotonoticia_20230119151515_1920-1.jpg)
The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, warned Thursday that Europe’s neighborhood «is on fire» beyond a Ukraine war, whose «shock waves» have been felt around the world in terms of high energy and food prices.
«Our neighborhood is on fire. Crises in Moldova and Serbia, Kosovo, Syria, Libya,» he said at an event organized by IE University in Madrid. Borrell has endorsed the words of the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, when he warned of the great challenges that the world faces beyond Ukraine and the need to tackle them all equally.
Borrell said that at the moment of the Russian invasion of Ukraine he immediately understood that «history had changed», that a «new page» of history was opening and that this decision of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, would have consequences for the whole world, especially for the Ukrainians.
In this regard, he welcomed the prompt reaction of the EU, which has so far allocated some 50 billion euros in military, economic and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. «The bill is high, but much more for Ukrainians who are losing many people and their country being destroyed,» he has lamented.
«We have to be sure that Ukraine will prevail,» Borrell has stressed, who has again lamented as on previous occasions the dependence on fossil energies coming from Russia. «This did not start with the war, but the war has made it much worse,» he said.
«The price of energy is the price of freedom. Ukrainians are paying it. What we had was an excessive dependence on Russian gas,» has recognized the head of European diplomacy, who has cited how EU member states, such as Hungary or Germany, had Russia as almost the only supplier.
«We learned that the strategic intentions of suppliers and the nature of the regime of the country that supplies you matter a lot, but we have been very naive because after the invasion of Crimea in 2014, we continued to increase our dependence on Russian gas and even built new pipelines,» he has acknowledged.
However, he has stressed that in «a very short time» Europe has managed to get rid of this dependence on Russian gas. «It was our Achilles heel,» he has said. «Germany today does not use a single unit of energy coming from Russia and by the end of the year, all European countries will have cut all dependence,» he has been confident.
The exception may be Hungary, either for «political reasons», or because it is «a landlocked country», said Borrell, who, on the other hand, predicted a poor scenario for Russia thanks to the economic sanctions that continue to arrive not only from Europe, but also from other partners such as the United States and Canada.
«Most of Russia’s gas fields will be exhausted. They have many, but in deep water in the Arctic and they don’t have the technology to supply these fields. If they want to exploit a new gas field, they need Western technology. And at the moment, they don’t have it and they won’t have it,» he said.
Unlike at the beginning of the war, when the authorities asked the population to consume less energy not only to tackle climate change but also to counteract energy dependence, Borrell now argues that «the solution will not come by using less energy».
«Maybe for us, who use a lot of energy. But in Africa, there are 600 million people who have never seen an electric light bulb, who do not know what electricity is and 40 percent of humanity has never used the Internet,» said Borrell, who excuses these countries for not being able to have alternatives to fossil fuels due to lack of infrastructure and financing for renewables.
«If we want people to increase their level of welfare, we have to spend a lot more energy. The question is where this energy is going to come from,» Borrell questioned.
CHINA, THE OTHER BIG CHALLENGE The other big issue in Borrell’s speech was the challenge posed by China for the West, since the Asian giant has become one of the main trading partners in areas that until a few decades ago were alien to it and the main technological competitor of, for example, the United States, which uses arguments of «national security policy» to prohibit its companies from trading with Chinese companies.
«The U.S. is talking about a decisive decade ahead, and in ten years they want to prevent China from becoming number one in technology. This will require accelerating domestic innovation and increasing subsidies,» Borrell has said.
However, Borrell clarified that the objective is not to do away with China — «it would be impossible anyway,» he admitted — but to «try to control the dependence» that can be dragged in from the Asian country.
«Cooperation with China will continue, but it will be controlled. And this is the struggle (…) Our technological dependence is today greater than our energy dependence on Russia», he acknowledged.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)