Europe’s energy dependency turns American power into economic punishment |
Europe likes to talk about “strategic autonomy.” It features prominently in speeches, summit communiqués, and glossy EU Commission pamphlets. Yet beneath the rhetoric lies an uncomfortable reality: the European Union has never been more strategically dependent on the United States, particularly in energy. Far from escaping an abusive economic relationship with Washington, Brussels has locked itself into one that grows more lopsided by the year.
A recent report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) delivered an awkward dose of reality. According to its projections, the United States could supply as much as 80 percent of the EU’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports by 2030, up from roughly 57 percent today. This is not an accident, nor an unfortunate byproduct of circumstance. It is the direct outcome of deliberate political choices made in Brussels, Berlin, and other European capitals-choices driven less by sober economic calculation than by ideology, geopolitics, and an almost reflexive deference to Washington.
The irony is difficult to miss. After years of proclaiming the need to escape dependence on Russian energy, European leaders have simply swapped one dominant supplier for another-only this time the supplier wields not just pipelines and contracts, but tariffs, sanctions, and an openly transactional foreign policy. Europe did not diversify its energy base. It re-centered it around the United States.
This dependency was formalized last summer when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a trade and tariff deal with then-President Donald Trump. In exchange for relief from US tariffs on European exports, Brussels committed itself to significantly increased purchases of American LNG, oil, and nuclear fuels. Von der Leyen hailed the agreement as a triumph of “stability and predictability,” claiming it would enhance Europe’s energy security while replacing Russian supplies.
In reality, the deal amounted to a long-term strategic concession. Europe bound its energy security to a country whose political system is volatile, whose trade policy is openly coercive, and whose leadership has repeatedly demonstrated a........