PARIS (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that it was necessary to prepare for a complete interruption of Russian gas supplies to Europe, while Moscow is already limiting its energy deliveries amid war in Ukraine.
The Russian gas giant Gazprom on Monday interrupted its gas deliveries to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline for ten days in order, it says, to carry out maintenance operations, generating a wave of concern from European governments, strongly dependent on this energy.
Russia had already reduced the flow passing through the gas pipeline to 40% of its capacity in June.
“Russia uses energy, as it uses food, as a weapon of war,” Emmanuel Macron said in a television interview.
“We must now prepare for a scenario where we have to do without Russian gas entirely”, he added, specifying that the total interruption of gas supplies was “not a theoretical scenario”. .
He says he has invited public administrations and large groups to prepare a plan to “consume less” energy, and he has invited, in general, the population to energy sobriety to get through the winter.
France is also rebuilding its stocks and diversifying its sources of supply, in particular by buying gas from Norway, the United States, Qatar and Algeria, specifies the Head of State. These stocks should be completely replenished by the fall, he added.
Emmanuel Macron specifies that France is not very dependent on Russian gas, compared to its neighbors, such as Germany. This source of energy meets 20% of French energy needs.
On the war in Ukraine, the head of state said that it was to be expected that the conflict would be particularly “tough” in the summer and autumn on the Eastern front.
Faced with these new threats, he felt that it was necessary to reinvest in army stocks, to continue to hire soldiers to have a “stronger army” and that it was necessary to produce faster and in greater volume.
He also said he wanted to invest in cyberspace, in the navy, and to continue the fight against terrorism in the Near and Middle East and in Africa.
Emmanuel Macron pledged on Wednesday that the military programming law, which notably plans to increase the budget of the Ministry of the Armed Forces to 50 billion euros in 2025, will be fully implemented.
(Caroline Pailliez, editing by Kate Entringer)