The European Union plans to end imports of Russian liquefied natural gas entirely by the end of the year, but instead of the promised energy independence it is getting a new dependency. This time on the United States.

American suppliers already account for around two thirds of Europe's liquefied gas imports, and their share could reach as much as 80 percent by 2028. Washington could overtake Norway as early as this year and become Europe's largest gas supplier, warns the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

From one tap to another tap

European energy and defence companies fear precisely this: that Brussels has merely swapped one strategic dependency for another - and handed the United States a powerful lever over European economic, energy and foreign policy.

The logic of the whole operation was clear and morally sound: Europe does not want to finance the Kremlin through its heating bills. Nobody is going to argue with that. But between the intention and the result one small thing got in the way - nobody built an alternative that does not end up in somebody else's hands. Eighty percent of supply from one provider is not diversification. It is the same dependency holding a different passport.

A question the Balkans know by heart

A region that has spent decades absorbing the price arithmetic of other people's energy decisions needs no explanation of how this works. When there is only one strategic supplier, price talks are not talks. They are a list of conditions that arrives by email.

And that is the real weakness of the Brussels plan: it solved the political side of the problem and left the structural side untouched. The gas will no longer come from the east - but it still comes from a single address. Does Europe genuinely believe the next hand on the valve will never want something in return?

What never got a deadline

What is missing from the picture is almost comically obvious: there is no equivalent deadline, no equivalent pressure and no equivalent political will for domestic production, for renewables and for the interconnections that would make Europe less dependent on any third party. The deadline for cutting Russian gas is precise, set for the end of the year. The deadline for energy self-sufficiency does not exist.

That is why the story Brussels is selling as liberation looks in practice more like relocation. The dependency did not disappear - it moved house, changed language and started charging in dollars. And the bill, as usual, will be read by the European consumer, not by the person who signed the contract.