00:00EU leaders are meeting in Cyprus amid mounting economic pressures from the Iran conflict with
00:04the oil and gas price spike already costing the bloc 22 billion euros. Ukraine has also returned
00:12to the forefront of the agenda after Hungary lifted its veto on Brussels 90 billion euro loan
00:16to Kiev. Bloomberg's chief Europe correspondent Oliver Crook is on location in Nikozia.
00:22Ali, good to have you with us. So how is the EU looking to tackle the energy price shock
00:28from the Iran conflict? I think for EU leaders, it's a matter of sort of impressing the worry that
00:36they have over the energy shock across Europe without really inspiring panic. And we've seen
00:41evidence of that already, Jumana, in the CPI and inflation data. We've seen it increasingly now
00:46in the GDP data data you saw for this morning. The Germans putting out their forecasts and cutting
00:50their expectations for growth by half. And that is something that now is going to be a very present
00:54concern for European leaders. The question is, how do they address that energy shock in a
00:58collective manner? You've had a number of different measures that have been deployed over 20
01:02countries within the European Union, 120 measures. It's cost those governments about 9 billion euros.
01:07How do you go forward sustainably if this is going to be a protracted crisis for the Europeans and
01:12for their gas and jet fuel supply? So one of the things that the EU can do and sort of
01:16coordinate those
01:17gas storage conversations among those member states, also about basically getting that jet fuel
01:21to each respective nations. There's always a concern within the European Union that, for example,
01:25a big country like Germany can pay a lot of money to get those sort of supplies, while other ones
01:30may
01:30not be able to. So it's a lot of coordination. The EU is also looking at suspending state aid rules
01:34throughout this crisis in order to make sure to make things easier for those companies and for those
01:39consumers. And there's, of course, that longer term push, Jumana, which the EU will use to say that
01:44this is all about electrification in the long term, no matter where your gas is coming from, whether it's
01:48Russia, whether it's the Gulf, and increasingly also concerns about the United States. You're not safe until
01:52your energy autonomous. And that is going to be one of their big pushes to try to get that energy
01:56independence through electricity and electrification. Yeah. Okay. So that's the energy linkage on back
02:02of the war in Iran. But then also, you know, other major developments, you were covering the Hungarian
02:08election a couple of weeks ago, and it seems that there is a breakthrough now in terms of releasing
02:13this loan, this long anticipated loan to Kiev. How significant is it going to be?
02:21Yeah, it is significant, Jumana. I think this is basically viewed by the Ukrainians. And Zelenskyy
02:25has told us this in the past, that this is basically life or death for them, this 90 billion
02:29euro loan. And it looks like it looks like it has now been approved and that it will be able
02:33to move
02:33forward. That being said, we've had a couple of false dons on this. So we'll just wait till the
02:37final moment to make sure that that does get paid out. And then the question is, when does that first
02:41tranche come out and get paid to the Ukrainians? They really needed the money by April. They have been
02:45saying they've managed to get a little bit of stopgap funding. But this is really, for Zelenskyy,
02:50a matter of survival. And he will be arriving a little bit later in Cyprus to discuss this
02:54with other European leaders. But it appears that that 90 billion euro loan will now move forward.
02:58What the sort of post-Orban regime within Hungary and within the European Union, however, it does create
03:04another set of opportunities. And we're going to have a lot more conversations, Jumana, about the
03:08Ukrainians joining the European Union, potentially in a more accelerated timeline, now that Viktor Orban is out.
Comments