AFP

With France becoming the latest country to be cut off from Russian natural gas, and supplies sharply reduced in Italy and Germany, Europe’s summer stockpiling plans are looking shaky.

As the war in Ukraine nears its fourth month, Moscow is hitting Europe — which gets some 40 percent of its gas from Russia — where it hurts.

Several European countries, including Italy and Germany, are highly reliant upon Russian gas for their energy needs and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has bluntly accused energy giant Gazprom of lying over the reasons for the cuts.

Europe uses less gas in summer months as it does not need to heat buildings, but countries are racing to replenish their reserves for the following winter.

The EU wants the gas storage infrastructures of its member states to be filled to at least 80 percent of their capacity by November.

The gas squeeze, which pushes prices up, “has consequences, not immediately on consumption, but on stockpiling”, Draghi said Thursday, adding that Italy’s reserves were at 52 percent.

– ‘Gas as weapon’ –

The reduction in supplies will also be costly for manufacturers — especially in countries like Germany, where factories in the chemical, steel, cement and fertiliser industries need huge quantities of gas.

“The Russians have been using gas as a weapon for a long time,” Thierry Bros, a professor at the Sciences Po university in Paris, told AFP.

“The Kremlin uses the principle of uncertainty, one day something and the next day something else, to… stretch the commodities market and drive up prices”.

Poland, Bulgaria, Finland and the Netherlands have had their natural gas deliveries suspended over refusing to follow Russia’s demand that it be paid in rubles.

The latest blows hit France Friday, where operator GRTgaz said it had not received any Russian gas by pipeline since 15 June, and Italy, which faced a third day of reduced supplies.

On Friday, Europe’s reference natural gas price, Dutch TTF, reached 130 euros ($137) per megawatt/hour compared to 100 euros on Wednesday — and 30 euros a year earlier.

– Breaking European unity –

France had been relying on Russia for about 17 percent of its gas, most of which arrived via pipeline, with the rest being brought in in liquid form by LNG ships.

The reason for the cut is unknown — but follows a 60 percent reduction in deliveries to Germany via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

Italy’s Eni said it will receive only 50 percent of the gas requested Friday.

Draghi has rejected Gazprom’s excuses, saying the reasons “we are told, are technical”.

“We and Germany and others believe that these are lies”.

The Russian company, he insisted Thursday, was using gas for “political” ends.

Germany’s economy and climate minister, Robert Habeck, has described the gas cuts as “a showdown with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin”.

“This is a decision he is making arbitrarily – that’s how dictators and despots act.” 

Gazprom, however, says Moscow has every right to play by its own rules over the cuts.

Bros at Sciences Po said Gazprom “does not need any justification”.

“It is cutting in a differentiated way to break European unity.”

EU countries have scrambled to wean themselves off Russian energy but are divided about imposing a natural gas embargo because several member states are heavily reliant on Moscow’s supplies.

Some are considering installing new terminals to boost their capabilities for liquefied natural gas (LNG).

France has already greatly upped purchases of LNG since the February invasion and its terminals are close to their maximum, according to GRTgaz.

The country has become the largest buyer of Russian LNG in the world, according to Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), which published a report on Russian oil and gas sales this week.

A Tesla shareholder has filed legal proceedings against Elon Musk and the company’s board of directors, accusing them of ignoring employee complaints of racism and sexual harassment.

The lawsuit — brought forward Thursday by plaintiff Solomon Chau in Texas where Tesla is headquartered — argues that an unaddressed “toxic workplace culture” at the company has caused “irreparable” reputational damage and financial harm.

The action was the latest against Tesla, which has been hit by a spate of sexual harassment lawsuits and Black employees complaining of rampant racism. 

In February, the state of California sued Tesla over alleged discrimination and harassment against Black employees at its Fremont plant near San Francisco, saying in a complaint that the company had created a “racially segregated workplace.”

Thursday’s court filing stated that a “toxic environment took shape internally for years and the truth about Tesla’s culture has only recently emerged, leading to actions by both regulators and private individuals.”

The lawsuit asserts that Musk, who is Tesla’s executive director, and its 11 board members ignored several “red flags”, which resulted in the departure of numerous highly qualified employees and set off a series of costly legal proceedings.

“These wrongs resulted in significant damages to Tesla’s reputation, goodwill, and standing in the business community”, the lawsuit states, and “exposed Tesla to hundreds of millions of dollars in potential liability for violations of state and federal law.”

In another lawsuit last year, Tesla was ordered to pay $137 million plus interest to a former elevator operator at its Fremont factory for turning a blind eye to racism. Earlier this year, the penalty was reduced to $15 million.

Other legal proceedings, in particular from Black women employees who claim to have been victims of racial slurs and inappropriate sexual remarks by colleagues or superiors, are underway.

Tesla, which has barely responded to requests from journalists since late 2020, did not respond to a request from AFP.

Musk was also sued on Thursday by an investor in dogecoin, who says he lost money after investing in the cryptocurrency, and described himself as an “American citizen who was defrauded” by what he called a “Dogecoin Crypto Pyramid Scheme.”

German pensioner Gabriele Washah waits in line to fill her trolley with bags of carrots for 50 cents, yoghurts just past their sell-by date and bunches of wilting flowers.

With the cost of living soaring across Europe, the 65-year-old retired shop assistant is one of many Germans turning to food banks to make ends meet. 

“Sometimes I go home from the shop almost crying because I can’t afford it any more,” she told AFP outside the row of stalls in Bernau, near Berlin.

Nestled in an alleyway behind a big chain supermarket, the food bank sells at greatly reduced prices groceries donated by supermarkets, as well as cheap prepared meals.

Here, customers can pick up a full trolley of food for around 30 euros (around $32).

For Washah, that means bread, butter and her favourite sandwich filling, sausage — “which used to cost 99 cents ($1.02) but now sometimes costs more than two euros”.

Driven by the war in Ukraine, inflation in Germany soared to 7.9 percent in May — its highest level since reunification in 1990, with food prices among those worst affected.

Demand for food banks across the country has increased “significantly” since the start of the year and doubled in some areas, according to a spokeswoman for the Tafel food bank network.

There are around 1,000 such schemes in Germany, run by volunteers and available to customers on a means-tested basis. 

Groceries, while donated, are still sold rather than given away free to the customers as the Tafel has to cover running costs, including rents and electricity. The organisation too has had to put up prices because their running costs have risen.

“It’s not just one product,” said 69-year-old pensioner Peter Behme. “All the prices are going up.”

– Poverty line –

In a bid to ease the pressure on squeezed finances, the government has lowered taxes on fuel, drastically slashed the cost of public transport and promised all taxpayers a one-off payment of 300 euros.

But Behme remains unimpressed. “I don’t know where the government help is going,” he said.

Even the food banks themselves are feeling the effects of the massive inflation.

“We have had to raise some prices by 20 or 50 cents because we need money to replenish our stocks,” said Malina Jankow, manager of the Bernau food bank.

Along with pensioners and unemployed people, the queues are now also filling up with Ukrainian refugees.

Anna Dec, a 35-year-old hospital worker, has come to Bernau with two Ukrainian women who are staying in her home and currently each receiving 449 euros a month in benefits.

“They have to pay for water, energy, food, hygiene products… That’s almost nothing,” she said.

Overwhelmed by the influx of customers, some food banks in Germany have had to turn away new arrivals or ration the food they distribute.

“We have been asking the government for a long time for a law to force supermarkets to give away their unsold food,” said Norbert Weich, 72, chairman of the food bank.

Some 16 percent of Germans, or more than 13 million people, were living below the poverty line in 2020, according to a study by the charity Deutscher Paritaetische Gesamtverband, published in December 2021.

“The federation of food banks has a resolution: as soon as we are no longer needed, we will disband,” said Weich. “But I don’t think it will be in my lifetime.”

A factory in Belgium behind a Salmonella contamination in Kinder chocolates sold in Europe can reopen conditionally after a clean-up by owner Ferrero, health authorities said Friday.

Belgium’s AFSCA food health safety agency “has decided to give Ferrero conditional authorisation for its production factory in Arlon,” in the country’s southeast, it said in a statement.

The permission was given for three months, during which all the products will be analysed before they can be distributed and sold, it added.

Ferrero was forced to withdraw more than 3,000 tonnes of Kinder products worth tens of millions of euros after the Salmonella cases were traced to Kinder chocolates made in its Arlon factory.

AFSCA ordered the factory closed in early April, just before the Easter period that usually sees Kinder products fly off supermarket shelves.

Nearly 400 Salmonella cases ended up being detected across the EU and Britain, many of them in children. There were no deaths. 

Salmonella contamination symptoms can include severe diarrhoea and vomiting that are particularly dangerous for children under 10.

Ferrero, an Italian confectionary giant that also makes the Nutella chocolate spread in other sites, said it had started the process of reopening the Arlon plant and expected production to restart in a few weeks.

It stressed that it had carried out a “deep clean” of the factory, which has around 1,000 workers, and taken steps so that such a contamination would never happen again. It said the contamination likely was from a filter in a dairy milk tank.

“We are truly sorry for what happened and want to apologise once more to all people who were affected,” Ferrero CEO Lapo Civiletti said.

The company is under several probes by Belgian authorities, who are notably investigating whether it was slow to respond to a hygiene problem that might have come to its attention months earlier.

Officials are seeing if Ferrero met obligations for tracing products in its food chain and if the Salmonella incident put human lives in danger.

Equity markets mostly fell Friday after another hefty drop in New York as interest rate hikes by the world’s central banks fan fears of a recession, while the yen sank after the Bank of Japan refused to follow its peers in tightening policy.

Gone is the optimism that flowed through trading floors immediately after the Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced its biggest rate increase for 28 years as global finance chiefs followed suit, putting a squeeze on dealers’ ability to borrow.

Markets have been tumbling for months as traders contemplate the end of the era of cheap cash that sent valuations to record or multi-year highs, with inflation at levels not seen in decades owing to a surge in energy and food prices.

The Bank of England on Thursday lifted rates for a fifth straight time to their highest since 2009 during the financial crisis, just as the Swiss central bank shocked markets by unveiling its own half-point increase — its first rise in 15 years. 

The European Central Bank has also signalled it will announce a hike soon.

Equities plunged as expectations for recession continue to rise. The Dow ended below 30,000 for the first time in more than a year and the S&P 500 is now at its lowest since December 2020.

But with rates rising everywhere else, the Bank of Japan on Friday refused to move away from its ultra-loose monetary policy, despite inflation spiking and the yen sitting around a 24-year low.

Officials in Tokyo insist that low rates are still needed to nurture a struggling economy, though in a move away from its regular remarks in the post-meeting statement, the bank did say it “was necessary to pay due attention to developments in financial and foreign exchange markets”.

The yen tumbled to 134.63 against the dollar, from 133.37 before the decision, though it recouped some of those losses after the statement. Still, it is wallowing around a 24-year low and has lost around 13 percent this year.

“The BoJ added language about foreign exchange markets following the earlier statement from the three-party gathering. That tells me they are getting more cautious and don’t want the yen to tumble to 140,” Mari Iwashita, of Daiwa Securities, said. 

Ahead of the meeting, Stephen Innes at SPI Asset Management wrote in a note: “No central bankers worth their weight would put inflation-fighting credentials on the line and import higher energy inflation via a weaker currency.”

He added that “in what is a highly ominous signal for stock market investors, given the broader index’s sensitivity to rising bond yields… the global race to hike rates is nowhere near the finishing line”. 

Still, in reaction to the decision he said there was a sense of relief among traders as “as the last thing the market needed was another blowdown equity valve to give way”.

Equity markets in Tokyo, Sydney, Seoul, Singapore, Wellington, Taipei, Mumbai, Manila and Jakarta were all in the red, though Hong Kong was slightly higher after steep losses on Thursday.

London, Paris and Frankfurt edged up in the morning session.

OANDA’s Jeffrey Halley had a warning for investors looking to pick up bargains.

“Even the most ardent buy-the-dipper in the equity space is starting to realise inflation is a threat, with central bank banks prepared to hike the world into a slowdown and possible recession to get on top of it,” he said in a note.

– Key figures at around 0810 GMT –

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 1.8 percent at 25,963.00 (close)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 1.1 percent at 21,075.00 (close)

Shanghai – Composite: UP 1.0 percent at 3,316.79 (close)

London – FTSE 100: UP 0.4 percent at 7,075.65

Dollar/yen: UP at 134.33 yen from 132.14 yen late Thursday

Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.0513 from $1.0550

Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.2298 from $1.2350

Euro/pound: UP at 85.50 pence from 85.40 pence

West Texas Intermediate: UP 0.7 percent at $118.42 per barrel

Brent North Sea crude: UP 0.7 percent at $120.63 per barrel

New York – Dow: DOWN 2.4 percent at 29,927.07 (close)

— Bloomberg News contributed to this story —