Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much for this opportunity to appear at this hearing.
The decision of the Canadian government to grant an exemption for the export of the Siemens gas turbine at the request of my country has given rise to much controversy and criticism. I want to give you the German perspective here.
Before I go into the arguments, allow me to place this question in a larger context. What we're having today is a very important debate, but it is a debate among very close partners and friends. We are all united and allied in our strategic goal. Russia must not win this war of aggression against Ukraine. It must not succeed in its attempt to redraw the map by force and it must not be allowed to destroy the post-war security order of Europe.
All governments called upon to witness today here in this room—Canadian, European and German—are actively and unambiguously supporting Ukraine against the Russian aggression. We do it politically, financially and militarily, including with heavy weapons.
Together with our partners in the G7, we have decided on unprecedented packages of far-reaching sanctions. I want to stress that we are in this for the long haul. As Chancellor Scholz just said, “We will support Ukraine for as long as it takes.” We want Ukraine to be free and sovereign and able to become part of the European Union.
Our message today should be clear to anybody and it should certainly be clear to Russia. We are Ukraine's friends and firm allies. We will stay the course.
When we now debate the export of these turbines, we're debating a very important issue, but it's not a strategic one; it's a tactical one. Both sides in this debate have valid and weighty arguments. No decision is perfect and none was easy. It was only after a lot of soul-searching that Germany asked Canada to allow a waiver of its national sanctions regime, and the Canadian government did grant it after difficult deliberations. We're very grateful for the decision.
The reasoning behind our request is simple. Our sanctions should impose an economic cost on Russia, but they must not harm us more than they harm Russian interests. As you well know, many countries in the EU, including Germany, are decreasingly dependent—but still dependent—on Russian gas for their energy supply. That's the reason why European sanctions—and U.S. sanctions, by the way—did not include sanctioning goods and services related to the delivery of Russian gas.
Canada has been a leader within the G7 on sanctions against Russia. Canadian legislation has imposed a broader sanctions regime nationally. It is geared to hurt Russia. It was certainly not designed to make it harder for the Europeans to fill their gas tanks, while quickly replacing Russian gas.
Mr. Chair, let me say that sanctions are a very blunt instrument. When states impose economic costs on another country, they often inflict unintended consequences on third parties. Waivers allow flexibility and they allow us to sharpen sanctions. All of our countries use them. The U.S. uses them. The EU just waived some sanctions on Russia to help open up Ukrainian food exports and to take away Russia's pretext that western sanctions are to blame for the global food crisis.
For a very similar reason, Germany asked Canada in June and July to allow the delivery of the turbines. We did not want to fall into Putin's trap. He pretended that the lacking turbine was the reason why Gazprom had to cut the delivery of gas to Germany and Europe. We did not believe him then and we do not believe him now. We're now seeing that Russia is finding more and more pretexts not to take the turbines back. That is really a case in point. We have called his bluff.
With the delivery of the turbine, the pretext is gone. Now it's clear for all to see that Russia is using energy to exert pressure on Europe. It's trying to pit one ally against the other, and it wants to divide us. We need to resist this.
We also need to get out of our dependency on Russian fossil fuels very fast. Germany has already taken a lot of bold steps, and the EU has too, as Melita explained. We have achieved good progress on coal; we're out of it. We're going to be out of oil very soon. On gas, well, on February 24, our dependency in Germany on Russian gas imports stood at 55%. In the last few weeks, it was down to 30%. I checked today; we're down to 26%. That's huge progress. Our goal is to completely phase out Russian energy as fast as we can.
Today, Germany as well as a considerable number of other European countries still need it in order to fill up for the coming winter, though. We're trying to fill up our gas storage as fast as we can to 80% to 90% as the backbone for the winter. It's very important for heating in Europe.
We're also preparing for the possibility that Russia will decide to cut off Europe completely or nearly completely. Nationally and on the EU level, we're coordinating a whole bundle of emergency measures. I will very quickly name just four.
We will bring back what we wanted to phase out, namely coal, and that is very painful in the face of our climate targets. We're in the process also of reassessing our nuclear phase-out. We may prolong the life cycle of our remaining nuclear reactors.
The second point is that we share and we save. The EU has just released its gas saving plan. Melita referred to it. Hopefully, all of the European countries will save energy at a rate of 15%, and Germany even more.
The third point is that we diversify. Our partners in Norway, Netherlands and the U.S. have increased their production in order to make up for at least some of the shortfalls in Russian gas. To receive liquefied gas, Germany will now be installing two LNG ports by the end of this year and probably two to four more by the end of next year.
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