The leadership of the European Union has been hard at work these days, trying to find a lasting solution to an energy crisis that is worsening by the day. Yet the way they are approaching the solution is unlikely to produce any lasting results. And so far, it has been compared to a Ponzi scheme. “One of the easiest policy levers if you will, is that you can pass a bill, appropriate money and give money to citizens to pay their electricity bills,” former Energy Secretary Dan Brouilette told CNBC this week.
He went on to agree when asked whether the approach could be compared to a Ponzi scheme. Yet the windfall tax and energy subsidies are only the beginning, it seems, and the final product might turn out to be much worse than a Ponzi scheme.
The Financial Times reported this week that the EU is seeking sweeping powers over businesses in member-states that would basically allow Brussels to tell these companies what to produce, how much of it, and whom to sell it to in times of a crisis. The definition of a crisis would be the prerogative of the same EU.
“We would be very concerned if this proposal was adopted in such an interventionist shape,” said Martynas Barysas, an executive for BusinessEurope, an employer association.
“It could oblige member states to override contract law, force companies to disclose commercially sensitive information, and share their stockpiled products or dictate their production under any type of crisis the commission decides…
