Defined as the art of maintaining peaceful relations between countries, there are many ways to exercise diplomacy and the one chosen by Martin Selmayr, the head of the European Commission delegation in Vienna, to speak clearly, has managed to equally anger the Austrian Government and the institution he represents with his comments about the “blood money” that the country sends to Russia with its gas purchases.
“We all know that diplomacy is not only about [transmitting] the right content, but also about using the right tone” and her choice of words “was not only unnecessary, but also inappropriate,” the EC spokesperson declared yesterday, Dana Spinant, after announcing that she has summoned Selmayr to Brussels to talk about what happened. The day before, the Austrian Foreign Ministry had called the senior German official, Jean Claude Juncker's former chief of staff, for consultations to express its discomfort.
The comments came during a talk on Wednesday in which a member of the public accused Ursula von der Leyen of having "blood on her hands" over EU arms shipments to Ukraine. Selmayr replied that she should rather complain about her country's gas purchases. "By God, 55% of Austrian gas is still coming from Russia," she said, surprised that no one was speaking out against sending "blood money" to Moscow.
The comments have sparked a political firestorm in Austria, which maintains a policy of neutrality towards the war. Brussels assumed the defense line of Vienna and stressed that Russian gas has gone from representing 80% to 50% and recalled that, at the EU level, although LNG imports have risen, total fuel consumption has gone up from 45% to 15% of the total.
