Germany to ban Russian oil imports by end of year

Germany has said it will stop importing oil from Russia by the end of the year.

“We will halve oil by the summer and will be at zero by the end of the year, and then gas will follow,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

Germany currently buys a quarter of its oil and 40% of its gas from Russia and has warned that it could face a recession if supplies suddenly stopped.

The US has already banned Russian oil imports, while the UK plans to phase them out by the end of the year.

The EU has said it will switch to alternative supplies and make Europe independent from Russian energy “well before 2030”.

Ms Baerbock said it would follow a “European roadmap” in phasing out oil and gas imports.

“Our joint exit, the complete exit of the European Union, is our common strength,” she added.

Germany has already halted the opening of a big Russian gas pipeline, Nord Stream 2, in response to the war.

Earlier this week, German economic institutes warned that immediately halting Russian imports would spark a sharp recession in Europe’s biggest economy by 2023.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has criticised Germany for falling short of the restrictions on Russian energy imports announced by the US and the UK.

German finance minister, Christian Lindner, told the BBC that his country was working “as fast as possible” to put an embargo on Russian energy into force.

He said an immediate Russian energy embargo could see the physical shutdown of German manufacturers and carmakers.

Mr Lindner said that the German aim was to enforce sanctions “which hurt him (Putin) more than us as Europeans and our single market”.

“I don’t fear economic costs (of buying less Russian energy). I fear the physical scenario, if you have to stop the supply, for a complete production line, this causes more than economic costs,” Mr Lindner told the BBC.

Mr Lindner said Russia was responsible for many of the economic and geopolitical issues hitting the world economy.

“Russia is responsible for all the geopolitical and economic risks” arising from the war – inflation, food crisis and a serious debt crisis in developing countries”

He also said that previous German governments had “miscalculated” on the country’s dependence on Russian energy.

“It was a strategic miscalculation from German governments, over the last two decades, and now we have to work on energy diversification.”

He also insisted that Vladimir Putin’s calculation that Germany will continue to be dependent on Germany buying its energy was “wrong”. – bbc.com