Countries all over the world, especially in Europe, have started implementing policies that ration food and fuel.
Europe’s struggles with its food and fuel supplies began after most nations on the continent imposed economic sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. This threatened the flow of already-critical commodities in Europe and threatened to collapse already-struggling global supply chains.
As a result, the prices of everything from oil to wheat have soared, leading to multi-decade high inflation rates. Supplies of these essential products have also dwindled after exports from Russia were completely strangled.
In Spain, the country started experiencing sporadic shortages of different products like eggs, milk and other dairy products almost immediately following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. In early March, major supermarkets like Mercadona and Makro began rationing sunflower oil.
Spain’s left-wing government even went further and gave stores the option to temporarily impose limits on the number of certain products customers purchase.
In Greece, at least four national supermarket chains have started rationing food products like flour and sunflower oil due to critically low supplies caused by the crippled supply chains coming out of Russia and Ukraine.
“The reason for the cap on these products is only precautionary, as our customers are concerned about the war in Ukraine,” said one official from supermarket chain Alfa-Beta Vassilopoulos. “We want to ensure we will be able to serve our customers’ needs in the future too.”
“Flour and sunflower oil are the two products which, apart from energy, the war has affected more than anything else,” said Greek Minister for Development and Investment Adonis Georgiadis. “There are already shortages throughout Europe.”
In Germany, the nation triggered the first part of a three-stage emergency plan to conserve the country’s natural gas supply. This move came after Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded that Germany pay for Russian gas in rubles in an attempt to twist Western sanctions against Russia.
The first stage of the emergency plan will lead to “targeted” shutdowns of the flow of natural gas to “specified individual large consumers.”
German Vice-Chancellor and Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck explained that the current rationing plan is a preventive measure implemented to make sure the country doesn’t experience a critical shortage.
Germany is also attempting to reduce or outright eliminate its dependence on Russian gas. Before the war, 55 percent of Germany’s natural gas came from Russia. Now, that number has been reduced to 40 percent with the help of natural gas flows from the Netherlands, France and Belgium.
According to the German Retail Association (HDE), consumers should prepare for another wave of price hikes for everyday goods and groceries.
Even before the outbreak of war in Ukraine, prices had risen by about five per cent “across the product range” as a result of increased energy prices, HDE President Josef Sanktjohanser told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung on Friday.
With Russia’s invasion hitting economies and the supply chain harder, yet another series of price increases is on the horizon.
A Russian government official has threatened that Russia will limit its vital food exports to only nations it considers “friendly”.
Dmitry Medvedev, a senior Russian security official who previously served as the nation’s president, has threatened that Russia may soon cut off the West from food exports.
A major player in the global market for wheat and other agri-food products, Russia will instead focus on keeping itself fed, according to Medvedev, alongside supplying its friends and close allies.
Posting on his Telegram, Medvedev said that cutting off the likes of North America and the European Union from its agricultural produce would be a very good way of retaliating against sanctions imposed by the West.
“It so happened that the food security of many countries depends on our supplies,” the Russian official wrote. “It turns out that our food is our quiet weapon. Quiet but ominous.”
“The priority in food supplies is our domestic market. And price control,” he continued. “We will supply food and crops only to our friends (fortunately, we have a lot of them, and they are not at all in Europe and not in North America). We will sell both for rubles and for their national currency in agreed proportions.”
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