Those who called him "paranoid" for warning of Russian aggression can now apologize to him, former Estonian President Toomas Ilves tweeted after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Thursday morning.

Could the same soon apply to those labeled “paranoid” over Russian gas freeze warnings?

Gazprom at least rushed to assure Thursday morning that gas supply agreements would be fulfilled.

This also applies to deliveries through Ukraine.

But the European Union does not want to rely on that.

The European Commission has been preparing for an emergency for weeks.

Henrik Kafsack

Business correspondent in Brussels.

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A delivery stop would be a challenge for the EU.

After all, it gets 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia.

In Germany it is almost half.

In the short term, however, as Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) emphasize in unison, she could cope with it, even if Russia has done everything in recent months to weaken the EU's gas supply.

Despite months of high prices, Russia has only delivered the gas it was required to deliver under its supply contracts.

Hardly any significant quantities have flowed through the Ukraine and Poland for weeks.

Only Nord Stream 1 and Turkstream are running normally.

The stores are empty.

According to the Commission, the storage facilities operated by Gazprom, which also includes Germany's largest natural gas storage facility in Rehden, are only 16 percent full.

However, the EU is benefiting from the fact that the winter has been milder than expected so far.

In addition, the Commission has been negotiating at high pressure with other gas suppliers over the past few weeks about replacement deliveries.

The list is long: USA, Qatar, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Norway, Algeria, Turkey, Nigeria, Japan and South Korea.

Japan has made concrete commitments about deliveries of liquefied natural gas (LNG), Korea actually wants to deliver LNG that it had promised and Qatar announced deliveries to Germany on Thursday.

More LNG than ever before

According to the commission, Norway is supplying as much gas as it can.

In addition, the EU imported more LNG via its 25 terminals in January than ever before and used them almost to capacity, even if deliveries have recently fallen slightly.

The largest LNG supplier is the United States.

However, they are now reaching their capacity limits when loading ships, which is why gas that should actually go to Asia or Latin America is being redirected.

So the EU will come over the not so long winter.

Even if it were still cold now, the storage facilities would not be completely empty at the end of winter, they say in Brussels.

However, a long-term delivery stop would pose completely different challenges for the EU.

That would no longer be so easy for the EU to cope with - especially since the storage tanks have to be filled in the summer to get through the next winter.

The energy expert Georg Zachmann from the Bruegel think tank in Brussels emphasizes that the consequences for the economy are not dramatic.

However, even if the LNG terminals and alternative pipelines were fully utilized, the loss of gas supplies could not be fully compensated for.

Zachmann estimates that a gap of 10 to 20 percent will remain.

The EU would have to compensate for this by restarting coal or nuclear power plants and by reducing consumption.

Proposal to bundle gas purchases

The question also arises as to who should pay for the filling of the reservoirs.

Because that will be expensive.

Based on current prices, the refill would cost 80 billion euros, says Zachmann.

This will hardly be possible without state aid.

The European Commission also admits this.

In a previously unpublished statement, which she originally wanted to present in the middle of next week, she advocates that the member states pay subsidies to the energy companies for filling the storage facilities.

The FAZ has received the notification, but it could still be fundamentally revised depending on the debate between the European heads of state and government at the summit on Thursday evening.

The Commission again advocates bundling gas purchases and announces a pilot project for this.

In addition, she announces legal requirements with which she wants to oblige the member states to fill their storage facilities to a minimum level by September 30th.

Of course, this should only apply to states that have storage facilities.

In fact, it is still unclear how this can be implemented in practice, according to the commission.

One therefore wants to wait and see how the traffic light government in Berlin, which is pursuing similar ideas, will implement them.

It should also not be easy to clarify who is ultimately entitled to deliveries from the gas storage facilities, i.e. whether Germany must undertake to deliver to countries without storage facilities and how these countries will then share in the costs.