24 March 2022
ECR MEP and Chair of the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Association Committee Witold Waszczykowski sent a written question to the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, inquiring: "What percentage of budget revenues obtained from exports of hydrocarbons from Russia is allocated to armaments?".
Mr Waszczykowski, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, also asked whether: “the Commission does not recognise the fact that Germany’s energy policy is leading to financing Russian aggression.”
The ECR MEP stressed that the idea of decarbonisation promoted by the European Commission and Mr Borrell – which assumes that “in the next 10 or 20 years” energy exports to the EU will decrease significantly – ”sounds like a sentence for countries struggling with Russian aggression”. As noted by Mr Waszczykowski, over the past 15 years “Russia invaded Georgia and Ukraine, and participated in a hybrid attack on Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.”
“I sent this written question almost exactly 3 months before the ongoing Russian invasion began. In the meantime, the reality has verified the notions contained in it,”
Waszczykowski commented. “I received the reply from the High Representative yesterday, which is almost exactly one month after the Russian attack. Therefore, Mr Borrell had enough time to reflect, but his answer is so detached from reality, it is as if there was no bloody war at our borders at all,” he added.
Mr Borrell’s response reads, among other things, that oil and gas revenues account for around 28 per cent of the Russian budget. Russia’s defence spending, in turn, accounts for around 16.5 per cent of its budgetary spending. Nevertheless, Mr Borrell stated explicitly that “this cannot be considered as supporting Russia’s foreign and defence policy.”
Commenting on these words, Mr Waszczykowski said: ”Mr Borrell’s response is outrageous. Even a bloody war at the borders of the EU would not open his eyes. The High Representative is clearly doing the bidding of the German government. For years, we have been trying to explain to our partners that energy dependence on Russia will lead to catastrophe. Our words, however, fell on deaf ears in Berlin and Brussels.”
“The Germans, not the Ukrainians, should pay for the mistakes of the all the consecutive iterations of the German government. Unfortunately, for Chancellor Scholz, the potential economic slowdown and higher energy prices for German society are unacceptable. Instead, what we have is a constant financing of Putin’s war machine, while Ukrainians pay with their own blood for decades of erroneous German policy. All this because what apparently matters more is that the Germans don’t get too cold without Russian gas. If Borrell cannot see the correlation, he should step down”, concluded Waszczykowski.