Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz has spoken out against combining the operating license for the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with efforts to de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine. “With regard to Nord Stream 2, it is a private-sector project,” he said on Friday night after the EU summit in Brussels. For commissioning, compliance with European law has to be clarified in one aspect. “An authority in Germany decides on this quite apolitically,” emphasized the SPD politician. This is “a different question” than the current efforts to prevent a violation of the Ukrainian borders.
The Baltic Sea pipeline from Russia to Germany was completed weeks ago. The Federal Network Agency decides on the operating permit. The pipeline has long been criticized by the US, but also by some EU countries. They fear that they are too dependent on Russia for energy supplies.
At its summit, the EU unanimously threatened Russia with retaliation in the event of an attack on Ukraine. In a joint statement by the heads of state and government, Russia urgently needs to defuse the tensions caused by the deployment of troops on the border with Ukraine and aggressive rhetoric. Any further military aggression would have “massive consequences and high costs”.
In the conflict in eastern Ukraine, government troops and Russian-backed separatists have faced each other since 2014. Actually there is currently a ceasefire. However, he is increasingly injured again and again and for weeks considerable Russian troop movements towards Ukraine have been causing concern in the EU. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in early December that it was “deeply concerned about evidence that Russia had plans for major aggressive steps against Ukraine.”
EU extends sanctions against Russia
The EU’s heads of state and government have extended the European Union’s existing economic sanctions against Russia for a further six months, said French President Macron after the summit. The EU had imposed trade and investment restrictions in 2014, despite billions in losses for domestic companies, after the alleged downing of a Malaysian plane carrying 298 people over eastern Ukraine in July 2014. According to UN estimates, more than 13,000 people have been killed since the conflict broke out. The EU sanctions were last extended in July to January 31 of next year. They will now apply until the end of July next year.
According to the current EU resolution, Russia can only hope that the economic sanctions will be lifted once the agreements of the so-called Minsk Peace Plan have been fully met. By linking the sanctions to the plan, the EU states want to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to use his influence on the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine more to settle the conflict.
The talks between the heads of state and government on energy policy ended late on Thursday evening without an agreement. “We noticed that there were different opinions at the table and that we could not agree on the conclusions that were presented,” said the chairman of the EU summit and president of the European Council, Charles Michel.
States discussed how to respond to high carbon prices and the upcoming green investment rules. Some states tried to urge the European Commission to propose the rules for their “sustainable financial taxonomy” later this month. According to Charles Michel, the heads of state or government would discuss the issues again at a future meeting.
Scholz and Macron want to stand together more closely on energy issues
Scholz and Macron now want to increasingly take action together on the issue. It is about the question of which forms of energy with the so-called taxonomy will be classified as sustainable in the EU in the future. France wants to see nuclear energy recognized as sustainable. Germany natural gas. Scholz and Macron stated that individual EU countries were taking different paths to become climate neutral.
Macron said it was not about using the so-called taxonomy to classify nuclear energy as equivalent to renewable energies. Rather, nuclear energy should be classified as non-fossil energy. With the taxonomy, technologies are to be given a label as sustainable and harmless, so that financial flows are increasingly directed towards green technologies.
Scholz said that the taxonomy dispute is “completely overrated”. This classification is important for financial investors. But in the end, the countries decided which path they wanted to take in terms of energy generation. “Taxonomy is a small topic on a very big question,” he said.
Germany had previously rejected France’s wish to classify nuclear energy as sustainable. The Greens in particular are against a sustainable label for nuclear energy.