Germany's trade union head sounded the alarm bells on Monday, telling local media that Russian natural gas supply cuts could lead to widespread industrial collapse.
"Entire industries are in danger of collapsing permanently because of the gas bottlenecks: aluminum, glass, the chemical industry," German Federation of Trade Unions head Yasmin Fahimi told reporters.
"Such a collapse would have massive consequences for the entire economy and jobs in Germany," he added, as reported by Business Insider.
The dire warning comes ahead of another planned cut in Russian gas supplies later this month.
Planned maintenance on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will see cuts in Russian gas supplies to Germany for a period of 11 days.
However, German energy officials have warned that Russia could leverage this planned maintenance to cut gas supplies to Germany fully.
That fear has prompted Germany's top officials to plead with consumers to cut down on usage.
Klaus Müller, the head of the Federal Network Agency, told media over the weekend that the planned Nord Stream 1 maintenance could end up being a longer period of "political maintenance", DW reported.
Earlier in June, Russian state-run Gazprom cut flows to Germany through Nord Stream 1 by 60 percent, blaming the cuts on Western sanctions that made it impossible to import turbines.
Nord Stream 1 sees Russian gas pumped through Ukraine to Germany.
Two weeks ago, Germany's BDI industry association drastically reduced its 2022 economic growth forecast from 3.5% to 1.5%, warning that a cut-off of Russian gas would mean recession, Reuters reported.
On Monday, Germany recorded its first monthly trade deficit (for May) in 30 years on shrinking demand for exports and rising costs of imports amid worsening economic predictions. According to Bloomberg, the first monthly trade deficit amounted to a gap of 1 billion euros.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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Julianne Geiger is a veteran editor, writer and researcher for Oilprice.com, and a member of the Creative Professionals Networking Group. More
Comments
When winter comes later this year the people of Europe will rise. This will be a historic uprising, when people will be dying of cold and energy starvation. Problem totally manufactured by the EU governments. Something like Arab spring, or worse.
This is what communism looks like. Have we learned NOTHING from the history of the 20th century (Stalin, Mao)???