Ihe answer is not too mysterious: it is obviously French and European dependence on Russian gas that is in question. Clément Beaune, Secretary of State for European Affairs, acknowledged on Monday March 14 on BFMTV the need for gas imports from Russia. And he goes even further: “Yes, we are dependent on Russian gas, that’s what creates difficulties. We finance, through that, the Russian war machine. It’s obvious.”
The French government therefore concedes that the importation of Russian gas finances, de facto, Vladimir Putin’s war effort. The French government draws the only possible consequence from this: we will have to reduce our dependence on Russian gas. The French ministers said it again and again this morning, in very proactive speeches. Clément Beaune said he was convinced that “We are going to reduce, by very strong measures, our dependence on Russian gas. We must not just decree that we no longer need Russian gas: we must find alternative solutions and accelerate our ecological transition.” His colleague in the government Barbara Pompili, the Minister for the Ecological Transition, added Monday morning on RTL: “What we have to do, what I’m doing, is to lower our dependence on Russian gas and oil.”
We “we are in the process” to lower our dependence, we will “find alternative solutions”Clément Beaune even talks about “very strong measures” : apparently, don’t worry, the problem is being solved. But one can be skeptical when one listens carefully to these statements. It all comes down to sentence structure. We don’t necessarily see it pass, but let’s pay attention to what Clément Beaune and Barbara Pompili are saying: “I believe that we will reduce our dependence” ; “What we have to do is to lower our addictions” ; “We have to find alternative solutions”…
Believe, duty, need: these are not just any words. In linguistics, these are called modulating verbs. That is to say, they do not express a decision, but only a possibility. They are not used to say what we are going to do, but only what we hope for. In reality, the government has made no commitment. The members of the government are content to describe to us an ideal world, in which France would no longer be dependent on Russian fossil fuels, without telling us how they intend to achieve this: it is purely incantatory rhetoric.
And moreover, we understand quite well why: if the executive began to announce ambitious measures in favor of the energy transition, we would be entitled to ask it why not having deployed them earlier, when the fight against global warming is one of the objectives announced by the President of the Republic since the very first days of his mandate!
But in this case, we would have to begin to wonder about the responsibility of the policies carried out by European governments, and in particular French, in the balance of economic power from which Vladimir Putin benefits to this day. Four weeks before a ballot in which he is playing his re-election, we understand that President Macron is in no hurry to ask this question…