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Remarks given recently (07 March 2022) by EVP Frans Timmermans on the war in Ukraine and the impact on EU climate and energy policy in the ENVI Committee.

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Chair, Honourable Members

In the course of weeks and days, European history has been changed. Europe will never be the way it was before. Any illusions anyone might have had about the nature of Putin's intentions, about how he sees the world. Things we could have known for many years, but we thought he might not act upon, have now materialized. This means that we have to take a different look; at how we organize ourselves, how we organize our collective security, how we strengthen our resilience, and how we strengthen our response.

Because today our thoughts are with the people in Ukraine who are suffering, in this unbearable war, under acts of barbarism unleashed upon them; providing them with the illusion of safe corridors to Russian territory, and then mining the safe corridors. There is no way you can take cynicism to a higher level than what the Russians are doing right now.

We need to find the most concrete possible expression of our solidarity with the suffering Ukrainian people. We need to respond to this challenge. Putin, if he is not stopped, will continue until he has restored what he thinks is the rightful Russian empire. And I'm afraid this is not limited to Ukraine.

I want to start on this because, as some of you know, I have lived in Russia. I have been following the country very closely for the last three decades. I have friends in Russia. I have friends in Ukraine. Like many of us here. There is no Russian who wants this war. Ukrainians are forced into a conflict with people whom they regard as their brothers and sisters. This is Putin's war and it should be on him and on his cronies. We have a huge responsibility in making sure it does not succeed. This has to be, and will be, his Waterloo.

Now, in reaction to this, of course, the main task any public authority has, is to fight for the security of our citizens. And that means looking again at our collective security arrangements, strengthening European security, and strengthening our transatlantic ties.

I want to refer to the historic introduction in the Bundestag by Chancellor Scholz on Sunday, a week ago. Here he recognized that we are in a completely new situation and responded to that and the whole idea of what in German is called ‘Wandel durch Handel' has been abandoned.

We need to stand up. This is an ideological confrontation with someone who despises us for our values and at the same time fears us for our values. Putin fears the European Union more than he fears NATO because he knows his citizens want what we have, and not what he is offering in the long run.

Now we need to move to the subject of why I'm here. I think it would be a historic mistake, to draw the conclusion from this security challenge in saying that this means the Green Deal and Fit-for-55 can go on the backburner.

We had a bit of that two years ago, with COVID. And then soon we discovered that the Green Deal offered some of the fundamental answers we needed to respond to the challenge. We noticed that we need to make our economy more resilient, more sustainable. We need to use the opportunities of the digital revolution. And I would argue that we are in a comparable situation.

The only way that we cannot be put under pressure from being Putin's customer is to no longer be his customer for our essential energy resources. The only way to achieve that is to speed up our transition to renewable energy resources.

To make our own energy, is the best answer. To do more and offshore wind, to do more in solar, to do more in hydrogen, to do more biomethane. We also need to diversify our energy resourcing for the time being. We also need to speed up investments in the built environment so that energy consumption is truly reduced, and therefore, also energy bills of our citizens can be reduced.

I believe this is of utmost importance that we understand that the Green Deal and Fit-for-55 have not become less urgent, but arguably even more urgent because of the challenge now thrown to us. Because we cannot be in this situation, where we depend on Russian energy that would come with strings attached, as clearly it is now. So this transition needs to be sped up.

We can do this. We will present plans tomorrow to you also to show how we can do this. We need to make sure, as I said, that we diversify our resourcing as long as we still need fossil fuels. We need to speed up our transition to renewables. We need to provide relief for our citizens that are suffering too much because of the high energy prices. We also need to make sure that we will be ready for the next winter. We're lucky enough that this winter has been a mild winter, but you can't bank on that. So, for next year, we need to make sure that our reserves are up to 80 or 90 percent so that we can face that challenge. And for that, we will also need to diversify. That is very important.

Agriculture is another subject. Please, don't believe in the illusion that you would help food production by making it less sustainable. By not opting for Farm to Fork Strategies, by not making it more resilient in terms of the natural environment and the food production. We need to reduce our dependency of potash coming from elsewhere, including Russia and Belarus. We need to reduce the amount of fertilizers that we need and we need to reduce the pesticides we need. So also here, I would argue that Farm to Fork is part of the answer and not part of the problem. And I am more than willing to discuss this, but I'm sure also other committees in this parliament would want to discuss that.

Finally, I believe that if we make the right choices in the days and months to come, we will overcome this challenge. We will be able to convince our citizens that continuing opting for the transition to renewables, continuing to opt for the Green Deal and Fit-for-55, is in their interest. But, we will only be convincing if this is perceived by our citizens as fair to them. Therefore, I believe making sure we address the issue of energy poverty by providing the instruments to our Member States to do that. But also by developing European policies that would allow us to address the risk of energy poverty is an essential prerequisite, not an accompanying element of Fit-for-55 or the Green Deal. It is an essential prerequisite to convince our citizens to go this path together.

I believe that because energy is such an essential element in our society; to heat our houses, to fuel our cars, to keep our society working and sticking together. We need to keep that in mind, because if we fail on this score, we ourselves will create the divisions in our society that Putin invested so much in over 20 years. This investment is now seen have gone to naught. Because all those who have been his best friends, and we know some of them also in this Parliament, are now all of a sudden very silent. But I would say: own it. Own what you said all these years.

Because you are the ones that did his bidding in creating divisions in our society. No more. We will stand united. But I repeat, we can only do that if our citizens understand that we are acting in their interest and that we will make sure that nobody is left behind.

Thank you.

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