Europe’s plan to wean off Russian energy could lead to price shocks and political blowback.

Europe is broadly united in its desire to hit Russian President Vladimir Putin for his aggression and destruction in Ukraine. But across the continent, politicians are warning of price shocks and inflation. Energy prices risk becoming an issue in next month’s French presidential election. The word “embargo” was trending on German Twitter.

E.U. nation leaders were scheduled to meet in France this week to discuss pandemic recovery. Instead, their conversations will focus on the war, including how to weaken Putin’s effort without destabilizing Europe.

Though the E.U. energy proposal stops short of the United States’ ban on all Russian gas and oil, it is a significant shift for a region that is vastly more reliant on Russian imports. Roughly 40 percent of E.U. gas comes from Russia, as well as more than a quarter of the bloc’s oil. Europe imports more than six times more oil from Russia than the United States does, according to the White House.

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E.U. officials cast the move as way to hit the Kremlin’s war chest while also reducing Russia’s leverage over the bloc. “We must become independent from Russian oil, coal and gas,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement Tuesday. “We simply cannot rely on a supplier who explicitly threatens us.”

Ending that reliance presents E.U. officials with a twofold challenge: Actually meeting the two-thirds goal and managing the complex fallout, as 27 E.U. nations with different degrees of reliance on Russian energy navigate supply issues, price spikes and domestic political upheaval.

The plan outlined Tuesday says the bloc will start diversifying gas supplies by upping Liquefied Natural Gas and pipeline imports from non-Russia suppliers and boosting the production and import of biomethane and renewable hydrogen.

Getting more natural gas from places like Norway or Nigeria is theoretically possible, but needs to be coordinated. With the question of supply up in the air, price increases were strongly predicted, experts said.

And there is still a possibility of countermeasures by Moscow. “Europe should be prepared for potential retaliation in response to sanctions or even just 'de facto’ import reductions of energy,” said Daniela Schwarzer, executive director for Europe and Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations.

The E.U. plan also calls for measures to decrease energy demand — installing more efficient heat pumps, updating buildings and lowering thermostats. However, it is not yet clear who will rally the European public, especially since some national governments have limited appetite for tough measures at home.

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By promising to wean off Russian gas, rather than quit cold turkey, E.U. officials have created a situation where countries may be fighting over scarce supply and focusing less on alternatives, said Georg Zachmann, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank.

“The Germans don’t want to think about bringing nuclear back. The French don’t want to touch gas-intensive chemical industries. The Italians are worried about what happens to their gas-fired power plants,” Zachmann said.

“Every country has its own problems,” he continued, “and navigating that is a huge challenge for the commission.”

“It will be hard, bloody hard,” Frans Timmermans, a Dutch politician and the European Commission’s vice president, said Tuesday. “But it’s possible.”

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Though some E.U. countries have called for outright bans on Russian energy imports, others, particularly Germany, which gets half its gas from Russia, have been vocal in their opposition.

Europe’s largest economy has spent years nurturing close ties with Russia, pursuing energy projects despite the 2014 invasion of Crimea and U.S. warnings about the risk of doing business with the Kremlin.

In the run-up to Russia’s war in Ukraine, a German business association even touted a “gratifying” increase in trade with Moscow. The country did not halt the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline until two days before Putin launched a large-scale invasion.

In a statement on Monday, just before the E.U. proposal, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the E.U. simply needs Russian gas. “Supplying Europe with energy for heat generation, mobility, electricity supply and industry cannot be secured in any other way at the moment.”

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Now Germans will be called on to cut imports that power all of these things — a reality that is dividing the country between those who think a two-thirds reduction goes too far and those who worry it does not go far enough.

A group of activists, scientists and experts on Wednesday signed a letter demanding an end to all fossil fuel imports from Russia to the E.U. “Every day, as E.U. states we pay over 500 million euros to the Russian leadership for the import of oil, gas and coal,” the letter said.

But fuel prices were already elevated before the war in Ukraine, prompting calls for government relief — and there is little interest in further instability in energy markets.

In a video that went viral on Tuesday, Tobias Hans, the minister president of Saarland, a small state in Western Germany, accused the federal government of enriching itself through fuel taxes. Filming himself at a gas station, Hans said that prices “have reached the point where we have to act.”

He joined his conservative ally Markus Söder, minister president of Bavaria, in demanding that the federal government enact a cap on fuel prices.

The coalition government passed a relief package before Russia’s invasion that included increases in commuter subsidies and immediate financial aid for poor families. Finance minister Christian Lindner said he would not rule out additional measures in the year ahead, but that the state could not compensate the rising costs of energy imports in the long-term. The state has limited resources, he said, and “we need to recognize that it is our contribution to solidarity with Ukraine to bear some negative economic consequences.”

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The French government is especially sensitive to the potential for rising fuel prices to deepen inequality and contribute to social unrest. There’s strong interest in avoiding a repeat of the yellow vest protests — launched in 2018 in response to a climate-oriented fuel tax increase.

Last fall, amid an initial surge in energy costs, the French government made the unusual decision to freeze natural gas prices and limit electricity price increases. Some of France’s poorest households became eligible for energy vouchers.

Many of the measures to limit price increases are expected to remain in place through this year, even as the government acknowledges that may be a more expensive proposition than originally envisioned. Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said this week that the government expects to spend about $11 billion this year to keep gas prices frozen — almost 10 times more than previously anticipated. Le Maire called on French consumers to do their part and curb energy consumption.

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The upcoming French presidential election in April, in which President Emmanuel Macron is seeking a second term, may have played a role in shaping France’s interventionist approach.

Macron asked his government last week to draw up a “social and economic resilience” plan for how the country can cope with the backlash of E.U. sanctions against Russia, and the effects of the war in Ukraine.

France gets about 20 percent of its natural gas from Russia — much less than Germany — and it is one of the world’s most nuclear-dependent nations. But several of its nuclear power plants have recently faced technical problems and had to suspend operations, putting additional pressure on French energy supplies that depend heavily on imported natural gas during the winter.

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In the long-run, Europe’s energy crisis could be a boost for Macron’s argument that the E.U. should become more self-sufficient. In the short-run, and with the election next month, the fallout could pose challenges for Macron, who recently warned the French that “this major crisis will have consequences on our lives, our economy.”

Noack reported from Paris and Guinan-Bank from Berlin. Quentin Ariès in Brussels contributed to this report.