“As for supporting the people in need, I made clear what lies ahead of us and what is already partly a reality but has not yet definitively become true. We need to be clear that we have a very tough fall and a very tough winter ahead of us. Two legislation packages of relief measures that we as a government have created have the answers,” Habeck said at a presentation of a new energy-saving initiative in Berlin.

In May, International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol expressed a similar view, warning that gas may have to be rationed in winter, particularly in countries that are especially dependent on deliveries from Russia, including Germany.

On 30 May, the EU leaders reached an agreement at a summit in Brussels to put an embargo on Russian oil transported by sea as part of the sixth package of sanctions in response to the Russian military operation in Ukraine.