The Gazprom subsidiary Nord Stream 2 has warned the EU Commission not to apply recently adopted rules for pipelines to its project still under construction. On Wednesday, a company spokesman confirmed a letter to the AFP news agency from Managing Director Matthias Warnig to Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
Nord Stream 2 is to transport gas from Russia to Germany and is particularly controversial in Eastern Europe. This month, the EU finally decided to amend the EU Gas Directive. Pipelines from third countries will in future be subject to EU regulations.
The operation of the pipeline and the supply of natural gas must then be strictly separated. Nord Stream 2 AG, which is majority-owned by the Russian Gazprom group, has both in its hands with the German-Russian project.
This regulation would discriminate against Nord Stream 2 AG as an investor, lamented Managing Director Warnig. The company has invested almost six billion euros in the pipeline project since 2015. The decisions had been made and implemented "before the adoption of the amendment to the directive", according to the letter initially reported by the magazine "Politico".
The EU directive basically applies to all pipelines from third countries. However, exceptions can be made for existing pipelines. Although Nord Stream 2 will probably not be operational when the revised directive comes into force, it will "essentially be completed", emphasised Warnig. The project must therefore be eligible for an exemption.
According to the company, more than 1000 kilometres of pipeline have been laid in the double-run pipeline to date. It will run for a total of 1230 kilometres through the Baltic Sea.
Eastern EU states and the U.S.-government in particular are extremely critical of the project. EPP top candidate Manfred Weber (CSU) has also announced to stop the construction project as a possible new EU Commission President. The pipeline would increase the EU's "dependence on Russian gas", he said in an interview with the Polish newspaper "Polska Times" published on Tuesday.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) is in favour of building the pipeline. Government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said on Wednesday in Berlin that the position had not changed.
Germany had blocked the legislative initiative to revise the gas directive for a long time. "The compromise reached on the gas directive is proof that Europe is in a position to come together even on controversially discussed issues," Demmer said. The new EU Commission is certainly also interested in this. Demmer did not want to comment on the question of whether there are still legal possibilities to stop the project.
A spokeswoman for the German Ministry of Economics stressed that it was important that the gas requirements of the EU and Germany were covered. In Germany in particular, this demand will increase in the foreseeable future due to the phasing out of nuclear power and coal.