According to the Minister of Economic Affairs, if Russia cut off gas supplies to Europe at the end of May, the effects on the Finnish economy would be more detrimental than the halt in oil imports. Mika Lintilä (Cen).
Speaking in Yle’s A-Studio’s current affairs program on Wednesday evening, Lintilä stated that a relatively large proportion of Finnish companies are dependent on Russian gas.
"That would be a very hard blow to Finnish industry. We are talking about thousands of jobs," the minister said, adding that the potential ripple effects of closing the gas taps would also be serious.
In practice, these effects can extend to the forest industry, the food industry and even healthcare.
"If Russian gas imports ceased, it would increase the price of gas coming through Estonia. The price of electricity would also rise. Equipment that can replace gas could replace it with oil. This is a difficult situation" Lintilä said.
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Lintilä represented Finland this week at an emergency meeting of EU energy ministers, which discussed energy imports from Russia under the guise of the Ukrainian war.
In its sixth and most recent series of sanctions against Russia, the European Commission has proposed a total ban on imports of Russian oil, banning imports of crude oil within six months and imports of refined products by the end of this year.
The proposed sanctions will enter into force if they are adopted unanimously by all EU countries, despite the opposition of both Hungary and Slovakia to the ban on oil imports.
According to preliminary reports, the two countries will be given more time to deal with the disruption of oil supplies.
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Source: The Nordic Page