Nathalie Loiseau, Horizons MEP, President of the Security and Defense Sub-Committee, former Minister for European Affairs, was the guest of “8:30 a.m. franceinfo”, Saturday September 10, 2022. Arrival of Liz Truss in Downing Street, crisis of the energy… She answers questions from Céline Asselot and Neila Latrous.
United Kingdom: “Liz Truss will have a difficult mandate”
“Liz Truss is going to have a difficult mandate” but “she has the opportunity to turn the page on the Johnson years”believes Nathalie Loiseau, about the new British Prime Minister who came to power on September 6. “She will have to establish her legitimacy since she did not come from a general election”according to the former French Minister for European Affairs.
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“If she wants to, if she has the political will, she can do something else”she adds, referring to the tenure of previous Prime Minister Boris Johnson “who spent his time existing in relation to Brexit, in relation to a form of marked hostility towards the European Union”.
Regarding relations between the European Union and the United Kingdom, Nathalie Loiseau continues by assuring that “on the European side, the hand is outstretched”. According to her, “If she wants to bring the UK closer to her natural allies and neighbors, she can do it. Will she do it? It’s in her hands”.
Energy: “Remaining dependent on the risks of blackmail” from Russia “is not reasonable”
“Do you know when the price of gas started going up and when Russia started cutting gas supplies to Europe? Not at the time of the sanctions, not even at the start of the war in Ukraine, but in July of Last year”, says Nathalie Loiseau. MEP Horizons believes that “Russia had decided, more than a year ago, to blackmail us with gas, to try to weaken us, because it intended to attack Ukraine”.
“Remaining dependent on these risks of blackmail is not reasonable in the medium term”, believes the former minister in charge of European Affairs, while European energy ministers have said they are in favor of a series of emergency measures to stem the soaring gas and electricity bills, even mentioning a price cap gas imports from the European Union. For Nathalie Loiseau, “that’s what you should do”. Moscow, for its part, threatens to stop its deliveries if such a mechanism is applied.
Freedom has a price, what is happening in Ukraine today is for the independence of the Ukrainian people, for their freedom, but also for ours.
Nathalie Loiseauat franceinfo
“We cannot let Ukraine down, what Vladimir Putin criticizes Ukraine for is having made a real democratic choice”she adds, recalling that “behind Ukraine it is the democratic model that is under attack”. “We have a duty to defend it and we have a real chance of succeeding”she assures.
In addition to ceilings, Nathalie Loiseau calls for energy sobriety, “with strong goals that are not unrealistic”. According to her, “If everyone does their part, we can overcome the situation”convinced that it is better “to organize sobriety ourselves” instead of “finding themselves faced with shortages or forced rationing”. It recalls that in the medium term “we will have to get out of fossil fuels (…) because the planet is burning”. “We are coming out of a summer of heat waves and forest fires which have made us see that it is no longer climate change that we are experiencing, it is a climate shock”.
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Find the entire “8:30 am franceinfo” of Saturday September 10, 2022: