In preparation for President-Elect Donald J. Trump returning to the White House, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen suggested that the bloc will look to replace Russian liquid natural gas (LNG) imports with supplies from the United States.
Speaking Friday from the European Council meeting in Budapest, EU President von der Leyen vowed to “build good relations” with the incoming Trump administration “from the very beginning.”
“I had the opportunity yesterday afternoon to congratulate Donald J. Trump on the phone. We discussed, among others, the topic of Ukraine and defence, trade, and energy,” she said.
In contrast to 2016, when European leaders treated the populist president-elect with thinly veiled contempt, the tone from the EU chief appears to signal a recognition of the powerful position Mr Trump will govern from in Washington after securing a strong mandate from the American public this week.
Highlighting a likely concession from Brussels in expected trade negotiations with the Trump administration, von der Leyen pointed to potentially increasing U.S. energy imports to lessen the continued dependency on Russia and to address America’s trade deficit with Europe.
She said that during her conversation with the president-elect, they “touched upon” the issue of liquid natural gas imports (LNG).
“We still get a lot of LG via Russia from Russia, and why not replace it by American LNG, which is cheaper for us and brings down our energy prices,” the EU chief said.
During her remarks, Mrs von der Leyen admitted that “stable and secure supply chains are needed to power the future of our economy” and that “over dependencies can quickly turn into vulnerabilities.”
In his first term in office, President Trump was frequently critical of European powers relying heavily on energy imports from Russia, while expecting the United States to foot the bill for protecting the bloc from Moscow.
In July 2018, President Trump said: “It is very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia, where we’re supposed to be guarding against Russia, and Germany goes and pays out billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia. We’re protecting Germany, we’re protecting France, we’re protecting all of these countries.”
“We’re paying a lot of money to protect, this has been going on for decades… it’s very unfair to our country, it’s very unfair to our taxpayers… these countries need to step it up, not over a ten year period, but immediately.”
The President also warned that countries like Germany would become “captive” to Vladimir Putin due to its over reliance on Russian gas and oil.
At the time, Trump’s warnings were literally laughed at by the Germans. However, his words turned prophetic when the EU was caught flat-footed by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which plunged the continent into an energy crisis that continues to strain economies in Europe to this day, with financial pressures collapsing the government in Berlin this week.