It is reported that two days ago, Putin said at a meeting that if Europe wants, Russia can still use the only remaining pipeline of "North Stream 2", and the price is much cheaper than that of the United States. This passage is seen as a response to Germany and France's request for help from the natural gas crisis in early this month. Facing the upcoming winter and the United States' natural gas , which is far higher than the international price standard. Macron is eager to use "deep friendship" to move the United States and allow them to achieve energy discounts; Scholz even stated that they would jointly form a "buyer alliance" and negotiate price cuts with exporting countries such as the United States. Because of the lack of negotiation chips, the plan is generally not optimistic about by the outside world.
data shows that due to the energy crisis and market shrinkage, Germany's inflation rate in September had exceeded 10%, regressing back 30 years ago. And the more unfavorable phenomenon is that as the domestic energy crisis gradually worsens, German local enterprises are experiencing a large number of outflows and relocating to more stable and energy-saving Europe and Asia. From the current perspective, these long-term impacts have far exceeded the current dilemma. If Germany cannot solve the problems they face, the phenomenon of enterprises "escape" will become more and more serious. Previously, Scholz had 200 billion euros to subsidize German energy, but this money could only solve the urgent problem, and such a huge expenditure could not be continued.
A few days ago, German Vice Premier and Minister of Economic and Climate Protection Habeck released a financial report, showing that the problems faced by Germany are far more serious than expected. The report mentioned that after the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Germany lowered its economic growth forecast this year to 2.2%, but now it has become 1.4%, and it may continue to decrease in the future. What the outside world did not expect is that the German economic sector predicts the growth rate next year to -0.4%, which means that Germany will experience an economic recession. Habek said the government is trying its best to implement policies to alleviate the economy, but the fundamental problem now is that energy prices are too high and this must be reduced.
If you want to reverse the adverse situation, Germany faces two options: one is to negotiate with the United States in accordance with what Scholz said, and jointly "pressurize" the United States to lower energy prices; this method is not realistic, because American energy companies are taking advantage of this opportunity to make a lot of profit. US media claims that this is "based on changing market demand", which implies that making money is completely legal and there is no reason to lower prices for these countries; and the United States is also facing the risk of an economic recession, and the "harvest" policy is unlikely to be relaxed. The second is to temporarily use the only remaining pipeline in Russia's "North Stream 2", but this will be subject to a serious political cost. Moreover, this pipeline is not safe, and there is a risk of being "leaked" at any time.
Also worth mentioning is that the German government spokesperson reiterated his rejection of Russia's proposal to use the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to transport gas to Europe, but their attitude has been greatly eased, believing that Putin's suggestion is "a good attempt." After the government released its financial report, it also sparked heated discussions on German public opinion. People recalled the "golden age" of rapid economic development in Germany during the administration of Merkel , and lamented that it is an unacceptable fact that it is about to enter the threshold of "negative growth". There are also comments: "The government always blames the problem on the 'international situation', but there are still many countries in the East that are achieving fiscal growth. Why don't we have a chance of peace? From now on, the future is really dark."
