This is no longer just a story of young people leaving and aging societies with significant internal migrations reshaping the spatial structure of the countries. It is the story of a region that has leveraged the EU integration context to ascend economically, but is demographically on the brink of erosion. Because where there is a vacuum, capital, influence, infrastructure—and often geopolitics—flow in.

The shame of Germany and the EU is nowhere to be found when they have the audacity to demand an increased supply of Norwegian gas.