Nord Stream 2 is blocking European Council’s works

A meeting of European Council’s working group concerning a mandate for the European Commission for negotiating legal status of a controversial project Nord Stream 2 was supposed to take place this week. It did not happen, because Council’s legal services had not prepared a statement.

As BiznesAlert.pl informed, a working group session, on which the European Commission was supposed to present its view on the proposition to give it a mandate to negotiate the legal status of a controversial project Nord Stream 2 with Russia should have taken place on 14th of September. This can be given by the Council who would decide whether the mandate should be „hard” – demanding of Russians, for instance by calling for a full implementation of EU law towards the investment, or „soft” – taking concessions to Russia’s benefit into account.

Unfortunately, because European Council’s legal services had not prepared the statement before the meeting, its agenda was depleted by the Nord Stream 2 plot. A new date of talks on this topic is yet to be passed on.

Despite that, a debate about Nord Stream 2 including members of the European Commission will take place in the European Parliament.

The litigation of Nord Stream 2

Nord Stream 2 is a project of a second pipeline construction from Russia to Germany, which, according to critics, will be used to bypass Ukraine, undermine diversification projects, like the LNG terminal in Świnoujście, and establishing Gazprom’s dominant position on Central and Eastern European markets. Supporters of the project, wholly belonging to the Russian giant, like western-European companies that provided it with loans, convince that it will be a source of new cheap resource deliveries.

Wojciech Jakóbik