Thursday December 30th 2021
Habeck wants to support Ukraine
Nouripour: Nord Stream 2 can hardly be prevented
Omid Nouripour believes the Nord Stream 2 project is wrong. However, the candidate for the Greens chairmanship no longer sees many options for stopping the pipeline from going into operation. Meanwhile, Economics Minister Habeck says he wants to promote the expansion of renewable energies in Ukraine.
The candidate for the chairmanship of the Greens, Omid Nouripour, sees only a few possibilities to prevent the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from going into operation. The “fundamental political decisions” had already been made by the previous government, Nouripour told the “Passauer Neue Presse”. Should the operation be compatible with applicable law, “I don’t see many possibilities to prevent this – even if I still think the project is wrong”.
The pipeline that is supposed to transport Russian natural gas to Germany is meeting with resistance from numerous allies of Germany. Critics accuse the Russian government of using natural gas supplies as a strategic weapon to put transit countries like Ukraine under pressure. With the new pipeline, Germany would stab these countries in the back.
Previously, Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck had defended the decision of the federal government to consider the approval of Nord Stream 2 from a purely legal point of view and not to interfere. However, depending on developments in the Ukraine conflict, he did not rule out a stop. “We are a constitutional state, and permits are granted in accordance with the law,” said the Greens chairman in the ZDF “heute journal”.
“Politics must concentrate on the political field, and that must then be analyzed in terms of foreign and geopolitical policy,” continued Habeck. “In other words, with a view to the situation in eastern Ukraine and the deployment of the Russian army there, a political decision will have to be made as to which sanctions, if any, will be issued if another hot conflict occurs there.”
Nouripour: Arms policy is becoming more restrictive
With the construction of the gas pipeline, Ukraine, as a gas transit country, threatens to slip out of the focus of the West, according to Habeck. The aim is to counteract this by supporting Ukraine in developing into a producer of renewable energies. His ministry is providing 150 million euros for this. He himself wants to travel to Ukraine to drive this forward – as soon as the corona situation allows.
Omid Nouripour confirmed in an interview with the “Passauer Neue Presse” that he was assuming a more restrictive armaments policy under the Ampel coalition. The SPD has always complained that it has not been able to assert itself against the Union on the issue, said the Green politician. With the Union no longer in the coalition, “I assume that a stricter stance will be possible,” he said.
Nouripour described the controversial arms exports of the previous government to Egypt as “unfortunate”. In order to make such decisions more difficult in the future, the Greens want to insist on the Arms Export Control Act anchored in the coalition agreement. This has a different “binding force” than the previously valid guidelines.
According to the coalition agreement, the law is intended to enshrine the EU’s common position on arms exports as well as national specifications on the export of war weapons and other armaments and an expansion of controls on the end-use of German arms exports. “Exceptions can only be made in justified individual cases that have to be documented in a publicly comprehensible manner,” says the coalition agreement.
“We will make the arms export control report transparent. We do not issue export licenses for armaments to states as long as they can be shown to have been directly involved in the Yemen war,” emphasize the traffic light parties. Last week it became known that the old federal government had approved armaments exports worth billions shortly before it left. Much of it went to the government in Egypt, which is accused of numerous human rights violations.