Economic and social suicide of the EU

Key Markets report for Wednesday, 9 April 2025

​As we’re likely going to find out soon enough, losing a war is devastating business. Already in 2014, the Europeans, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande enthusiastically jumped onboard with Project Ukraine. It will have turned out fatal for the EU. Two years ago, only about 16 months into the conflict, EU’s then Commissioner for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell gave us an important clue about the costs of EU’s Ukraine misadventure. Here’s what he said at the Shangri La Dialogue forum, held in Singapore in June 2023:

“For the first time ever, we have been funding military support to a country under attack. … If you add up all the support – military, civilian, economic, financial and humanitarian – the level of support to Ukraine is about €60 billion for Europe. But let me show another figure which is really impressive: if you include the support that the European governments have had to pay in order to help their families and firms to face the high prices of electricity, of food, the subsidies to our people in order to face the consequences of the war is €700 billion – ten times more than the support for Ukraine. Which shows that the consequences of this war are not reduced to what’s happening in Ukraine but to the shockwaves that the war has been sending all around the world.”

Things kept going downhill from there. By today, the cost of the EU's commitment to Project Ukraine could be as much as €1.3 trillion. The figure resulted from an in-depth analysis of Brussels’ own calculation by Russia’s business newspaper Vedomosti.

Giving away competitiveness

For example, before 2022, Russian oil was priced at €571 per ton — €155 cheaper than from other suppliers. But the Europeans sanctioned those supplies away. They also reduced imports of natural gas from Russia by more than half, from 48 million to 22 million tons. The Yamal–Europe pipeline was shut down, the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up, and by the end of 2024, Europe stopped using Ukraine’s gas transit system.

The damage from energy sanctions against Russia have so far surpassed half a trillion euros: had the EU continued buying Russian oil and gas at normal market prices over the past three years, it would have saved €544 billion:

• €178 billion on gas

• €187 billion on oil

• €70 billion on oil products

• €25 billion on coal

• €17 billion on electricity

According to Vedomosti, the main beneficiaries have been the United States and the UK who are now selling their oil and gas to Europe at triple the price. The EU idiocracy’s choice of more democratic Western hydrocarbons generated handsome windfalls for the suppliers who are more aligned with our values:

• €165 billion for the U.S.

• €85 billion for Norway

• €62 billion for the UK

All of this extra revenue has flowed out of Europeans’ pockets and straight abroad:

• ExxonMobil (U.S.): +$231 billion

• Shell (UK): +$209 billion

• BP (UK): +$200 billion

All this still pales in comparison to the sanctions’ impact on the EU's GDP: the drop in gas supplies alone has cost the EU up to 2 percentage points of GDP growth annually. On average, the EU’s cumulative GDP loss is nearly 4%, adding to a staggering total of €1.3 trillion over three years. Germany has been hit the hardest — its economy is contracting for a second consecutive year. For the first time in economic history, the EU has entered a phase of deindustrialization: industrial output fell by 1% in 2023 and by 2.5% in 2024. In some sectors — like steel — the drop has been nothing short of catastrophic, at -18%.

The EU's electricity now costs 3 times what it costs in the US, and its gas is 5 times more expensive. Even if the idiocracy somehow saw the light and reversed course today, the situation would not substantially improve before 2030. Thus far, consumer prices have increased by nearly 20% since the start of the conflict in Ukraine. In some sectors, the increases have been quite brutal:

• Coal: +73%

• Gas: +51%

• Gasoline: +43%

• Electricity: +32%

• Heating: +54%

• Airfare: +40%

These changes have collapsed the EU industries’ competitiveness and Germany alone has lost over 250,000 manufacturing jobs.

Trump collapsed Europe’s whole business model

We are now finding out why Trump’s tariffs caused as much hysteria among EU’s leaders as they did. The old continent’s whole business plan was based on exporting to the US and UK. What’s worse, a growing proportion of those exports were manufactured in China as European producers moved their manufacturing there. The EU's whole economic setup hinged on these relationships which are now being dismantled.

In all, it seems like the perfect storm for Europe, which is stil largely ruled by the same parasitic colonial oligarchies hidden behind their visible servants like Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Radek Sikorski, and others like them. As they seem to be losing on all economic and geopolitical fronts, to preserve their power and privileges, they’ll have to focus on preventing popular uprisings and civil wars from erupting.

Over the coming months and years we’ll therefore see accelerated efforts on programs like digital ID, lawfare, censorship, net zero policies, medical assistance in dying, attacks against populist parties and their leaders (including imprisonments and assassinations) and introduction of central bank digital currency for the EU. In the TrendCompass report I published on 8 July 2024, I wrote as follows:

An acquaintance who is close to French military circles told me (a few months ago in fact) that many in the military believe that the current political crisis will lead to a civil war in France. They are preparing for it. Last week I spoke to a friend who is a top ranking member of the AfD party and he told me that the same foreboding is spreading in Germany as well.

Today we can see conditions in Europe crystallizing in this direction as the economic crisis gives way to a greater social crisis.

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Trading signals for Key Markets, 9 April 2025

With yesterday’s closing prices we have the following changes: