Monday, December 13, 2021
Baerbock against commissioning
Austria demands the start of Nord Stream 2
Federal Foreign Minister Baerbock recently confirmed that the pipeline could not be put into operation at the moment. Your Austrian counterpart Schallenberg sees it differently. The times at which criticism arises seem questionable to him.
The Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg has asked the Council of European Foreign Ministers for the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline to go into operation quickly. The project was “finished, now we should use it,” said Schallenberg in Brussels. He contradicted Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who took part in the Brussels deliberations for the first time.
With a view to the recent tensions with Moscow in the Ukraine conflict, Schallenberg emphasized that he considered it “a mistake” to repeatedly question the pipeline when a discussion with Russia arises. Like Germany, Austria also obtains natural gas from Russia.
On Sunday evening, Baerbock spoke out against the rapid commissioning of Nord Stream 2 on the ZDF “heute journal”. The Green politician emphasized that the pipeline “does not meet the requirements of European energy law and that security issues are still in the room anyway”.
At her first Brussels Foreign Council, the Green politician referred to the suspended proceedings in Germany. “The Federal Network Agency has just suspended the certification process because there are clear requirements in European energy law,” she said.
The Bonn authority temporarily stopped the procedure for the Baltic Sea pipeline in mid-November because the operator – the state-owned Russian Gazprom group – is not organized under German law. The EU Commission will examine whether the pipeline also complies with European law when the procedure in Germany has been completed.