“Energy is political”

It is unclear whether the Russian-German gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2 will retain political backing following the German federal election, Anna Sauerbrey writes for Tagesspiegel. The Social Democrats supported the project and it would "likely lose backing in any government without the SPD", writes Sauerbrey. Elmar Brok of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) told the paper the pipeline was a "political project" and said "a single foreign state company must not dominate our market." Brok, a former chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the European Parliament, called for "open and honest discussion" of the project after the election.

Read the article in German here.

For background, read the CLEW dossier The Energiewende and its implications for international security and the CLEW factsheet Germany’s dependence on imported fossil fuels.