The support to public and business in relation to energy prices is an entirely separate program to the COVID recovery program meaning it has its own budget so it is at best misleading if not an out right lie to claim they have burned through half or more of it on subsidies for the energy crisis.
The energy crisis program was enacted in various forms at various times from September 2021 onwards. Depending on the source (I have read a few) support from January 2021 until December/January 2022/2023 was between 758 and 792 billion euro's.
National fiscal policy responses to the energy crisis
Since that time prices for electricity, natural gas etc have exploded but also crashed.
EU: monthly electricity prices by country 2023 | Statista
EU Natural Gas - 2023 Data - 2010-2022 Historical - 2024 Forecast - Price - Quote
The conditions that caused the energy crisis in 2021/22 are not the same today, costs have fallen faster then they rose and will likely stay down if not lower for quite some time. Gas storage is at or near peak capacity, new suppliers, trade routes etc are now well established. while there will likely be an uptick in gas prices come winter it wont be nearly as severe or long lasting.
Yes, of course. The Recovery Plan budget was simply referenced to indicate the magnitude of spending. I can see now the way I worded it wasn’t the best, sorry for the confusion. And appreciate the catch and clarification.
In regards to the price fluctuations and spikes, the risk is still significant and there was a bit of talk about it in the past couple of months. If next winter proves to be anything but “warm”, there could be trouble. They have been debating the use of UA gas storage facilities to mitigate the risks as well. Just to provide an idea (and a coveted source), a month or so old article (first relevant result Google search provided), but there are more recent and maybe better articles as well:
Ukraine gas storage: EU needs more capacity – DW – 06/27/2023
The money they paid in subsidies on fossil fuel is not the cost of the war. This is money that governments spend in order to please voters by shielding them from the ups and downs of energy prices that are natural in a market economy. Since most European governments are extremely populist in nature, they didn’t allow the market forces to shape demand by allowing retail prices to reflect the economic reality of higher oil and gas prices. The subsidies are a political choice, not a necessity or a cost of the war.
The real economic cost of the war is the money spent on weapons, military training and direct economic help for Ukraine (which would continue to be needed even after the war stops). That’s why I said Europe can easily afford it.
Sorry, but this is a real economic cost of this war to any particular European nation and the Union as a whole. In fact, any money any particular individual or a group of individuals, if you will (or a government, otherwise stated), paid that they would not if the conflict didn’t exists is exactly what economic cost of this war (or any war, for that matter) is. I am not sure why some or many have difficulties with this concept. I mean it is right in the term itself that you chose to you use “economic cost of war”: the budgets need to be changed, additional spending allocated for the expenditures that weren’t planned on, the debt load has to be increased significantly, economic forecasts adjusted, both short and long term, and so on. Literally, economic costs of a conflict.
Regardless, I believe I made the point I was trying to make and it seems we are getting off topic. Agree or disagree, it is what it is. Last thing I will say on the subject is that “can easily afford it” is not true for obvious reasons, one of the main ones being the exact aforementioned economic costs are simply not sustainable. In other words, there is no separate surplus or cash reserves to pay for these costs along side of what you consider to be “real economic costs of war”, including military, financial, humanitarian, etc assistance.
OK, before I bow out for the evening, I reread your post again just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Sorry but the entire post makes zero sense whatsoever. The most obvious example is the last sentence of the first paragraph:
The subsidies are a political choice, not a necessity or a cost of the war. This is a complete… rubbish, really. The subsidies (particularly and especially in this case) are a necessity because they eliminate or, rather, reduce the severity of the shock to the economy and functioning of the society. These that you do not consider to be costs are going to have to be repaid by the same society (perhaps a different generation(s)) and in multiplied terms due to the borrowing rates. However, these subsidies allowed this society to move through, over, and forward (at least for the time being anyway because this could be debated further) because the “government” is a single entity that is large enough and has the ability to borrow this astronomical amount of money on behalf of the said society. There could be questions about the use (or redistribution) of the funds and so on, but I do believe questioning the necessity or excluding these as costs is simply silly.
Anyway, I forgot what I came to actually post, lol. One bit is that Politico reported that a few Ukrainian pilots are ready to begin the F-16 training:
Eight Ukrainian pilots ready to train on F-16s. The article states that there are only 8 pilots that are currently ready to go through the training because they are fluent in English. There are about 20 more that are ready to start English courses in the UK and the article hints that this might be the actual meaning of the start of the “F-16 training” that Zelensky referred to because there was no drafts/proposals by any participating nations that had yet been submitted to the US for approval, which is a process on its own. The total number of pilots they are aiming for and that are currently suitable is 32, according to the article. Not sure what to make of this bit:
U.S. officials insist the F-16s are for the yearslong defense of Ukraine, to make Russia think twice about enhancing its invasion of the country.