Europeans fall prey to prices

Nearly doubled

As a result, energy costs for households across Europe are now nearly double what they were a year ago, according to the Household Energy Price Index announced last month and based on research in several EU countries.

The soaring energy prices also pushed annual inflation in the 19-member eurozone to 10.1 percent last month.

The European Commission, in its Autumn Economic Forecast issued in November, said that inflation will remain at 7 percent next year and GDP growth at only 0.3 percent.

France's President Emmanuel Macron has vented against the exorbitant prices of energy imports.

"American gas is 3-4 times cheaper on the domestic market than the price at which they offer it to Europeans," he said in October following an EU summit in Brussels. "These are double standards." At issue was "sincerity in transatlantic trade", he said.

A few days earlier, Macron accused the US and Norway of reaping "the real super profits" in benefiting from what he called "geopolitical war unearned income".

Yan Shaohua, an associate professor at the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said, "EU sanctions against Russian energy is a double-edged sword."

The EU ban on Russian oil has hurt Russia because it is so dependent on the market and it is difficult to find an alternative quickly, Yan said.

"Yet the sanctions have also had a backlash on industries and people's livelihoods in the EU, leading to soaring energy prices and prolonged inflation."

Gal Luft, co-director of the US-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, called the EU sanctions on Russian energy "an exercise in self-mutilation".

"The shift from piped Russian gas to LNG is a self-imposed permanent tax on European people and businesses because LNG will forever be more expensive," he said.

"This will inevitably cause migration of energy-intensive industries from Europe to cheap energy jurisdictions. The result: the permanent decline of Europe as an industrial powerhouse."

Yan Qin, an Oslo-based lead carbon analyst with the markets financial data provider Refinitiv, said that while the EU sanctions have reduced Russian exporting revenue to some extent, they have also had impacts on EU countries.

The EU's efforts to find alternative coal imports from countries such as Australia, Colombia and South Africa have pushed up prices, she said.