One must have a heart of stone not to weep at the continuous absurdity of European energy policies. The EU, although essentially an energy vassal, believes it can dictate to the rest of the world how hydrocarbons should be produced. Unfortunately for Brussels’ bureaucrats, the rest of the world is no longer playing along, as Qatar has warned that it will stop crucial gas shipments to the EU if member states strictly enforce new legislation. The legislation sets out to penalise companies which fail to meet targets on carbon emissions and workers’ rights.

But the bloc has entirely overestimated its own leverage while underestimating that of its opponents. By the most diligent calculations, the EU’s share of global oil production is under 0.4%. In terms of natural gas, this figure stands at just 2.3%. Regarding coal, the EU accounted for 309 million tons of the total 8,057 million tons produced worldwide in 2021, representing only 3.8% of global production. A cynic might say that it is easy for Brussels to demand due diligence in production processes because it does not produce anything themselves.

As the Financial Times reports, the measures for non-compliance are likely to deter business in Europe. “The law requires EU countries to introduce powers to impose fines for non-compliance with an upper limit of at least 5 per cent of the company’s annual global revenue,” the report states. Qatar’s energy minister said that this would be an unacceptable amount of profit to forfeit, and thus, state-owned QatarEnergy would stop importing to Europe.