Von der Leyen meets youth climate activists to
talk about Russian energy
The meeting follows negotiations by European leaders
last week to wean themselves off Russian energy.
BY VICTOR
JACK
March 26,
2022 6:06 pm
The fight
to help Europe break free from its Russian energy addiction continued Saturday
when activists from the Greta Thunberg-inspired Fridays for Future movement met
with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The
activists — including a Ukrainian refugee — spoke with von der Leyen about
accelerating the EU's shift to renewables, the challenges involved in
persuading reticent member states such as Hungary to back a Russian oil
embargo, and tentatively discussed meeting again at a conference in April.
This marks
the third meeting between the movement and von der Leyen since its inception in
2018, and comes after FFF activists met Polish conservative MEPs last week to
discuss a Russian oil embargo, overturning a longstanding rivalry between the
two sides. It also follows negotiations between EU leaders on weaning
themselves off Russian energy at a European Council summit, which resulted in
an EU-U.S. agreement on Friday to increase the bloc's imports of liquefied
natural gas from the U.S.
"It
was incredibly interesting to hear her strongly committed to shifting away from
fossil fuels," Dominika Lasota, a 20-year-old activist from Poland said of
the meeting with von der Leyen. "She views that now perhaps is the moment
to finally abandon the destructive sources of energy."
"We
need to set up a new normal ... and make sure when the last bomb falls on
Ukraine it will also mean the end of the fossil fuel system that has been at
the foundation of the crisis," Lasota said.
The
activists also addressed how the EU should protect Ukrainian refugee rights in
the longer term. Lasota said von der Leyen "believes now is a lesson and a
moment to think about Europe's approach to people seeking refuge in the EU
equally and differently to what has been there in 2015." More than 3.5
million refugees have crossed into the EU from Ukraine since Vladimir Putin's
war began more than a month ago.
"Many
of the things that seemed impossible within the EU are now some things we're
discussing actively," Lasota said.
The four
activists at the meeting included 16-year-old Ukrainian campaigner Arina Bilai,
who fled from Kyiv to Warsaw one week ago, as well as Hungary's Lili
Aschenbrenner and German activist Luisa Neubauer.
"Europe
needs to get rid of fossil fuels," said von der Leyen on Twitter following
the meeting. "Rolling out renewables quickly can help us become
independent of the Russian gas, oil and coal which Putin uses to finance his war
machine."
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