Two years ago, on December 21, 2015, Russia issued a warning to the European Union that any move to cancel the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline that would connect from Russia’s Baltic coast to Germany would only hurt Europe.
“The sides have reached considerable progress in terms of legal, technical, economic and financial aspects of this agreement,” Russian Economy Minister Aleksei Ulyukayev said on that day in Brussels. “Failing to implement it now would be a shot in one’s foot from the side of whoever would want to do it,” he said. “This is about Europe’s energy balance, safeguarding security of supplies, these are most important questions.”
The Nord Stream-2 project involves German and Dutch companies, as well as Russia’s Gazprom. The project fell into question during the previous week in December 2015 after Italy raised it as an issue during debate over extending Russian economic sanctions.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said Berlin’s plans to turn Germany into a hub for the distribution of Russian gas through the project was intended to bypass Ukraine, and “left a dubious taste,” especially after a similar South Stream project that would have benefitted Italy was blocked by sanctions in 2014.
Since the announcement on December 21, 2015, and with the expansion of EU sanctions in the wake of Russian aggression, a number of European states have solidified their resolve against the Nord Stream-2 project. The EU has declared, as a long-term strategy, the diversification of its gas supplies, and the Nord Stream-2 project would violate those declared strategies. A letter signed by nine member state leaders of the EU was sent to the European Commission in March 2016. Denmark’s Parliament passed a law that could ban the routing of the pipeline through Denmark’s territorial waters on grounds of security or foreign policy. Sweden has also voiced concerns about the pipeline being routed through Swedish territorial waters. These issues are to be resolved by the European Commission.
On December 13 of this year, Presidents Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine and Andrzej Duda of Poland announced in Kharkiv that they had a “common position with regard to the Nord Stream-2” project. “This is a threat not only to the energy security of Ukraine or Poland but to the energy security of the whole of Europe. This is a political project,” Mr. Poroshenko said.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State John McCarrick told European journalists in Brussels in November that U.S. officials “don’t see the possibility that Nord Stream-2 can be built.” The U.S. has imposed sanctions against European companies involved with the Nord Stream-2 project and other Russian energy projects in Europe.
Source: “Russia on cancelling Nord Stream,” by RFE/RL (with reporting by Reuters, Interfax and TASS), The Ukrainian Weekly, December 27, 2015-January 3, 2016.