“European Commission warns Moscow”

The European Commission wants to directly negotiate with Russia a skeleton agreement on the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. Otherwise, the project would “end up in court”, Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic said. He added that it would be against Russia’s interests if Nord Stream 2 was thwarted by Polish courts, as was the case with the OPAL pipeline. According to the newspaper, neither Russia nor the European-Russian consortium funding the pipeline were interested in negotiating an agreement with the European Commission, arguing that the same had not been necessary for Nord Stream 1. The Commission, however, says that “political and legal conditions have changed”. 

See the CLEW factsheet Germany’s dependence on imported fossil fuels for background.