If according to some critics, Nord Stream 2 makes Europe dependent on Russia, Manfred Weber, president of the EPP group in the European Parliament, proposes, on the contrary, to use the gas pipeline to put pressure on Moscow.
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Nord Stream 2 “is not in the European interest”, Manfred Weber, president of the EPP group in the European Parliament, told Der Spiegel magazine, who still considers the pipeline as a lever of EU foreign policy .
“It economically stabilizes the Putin system, which acts massively against the EU and its states,” underlines Manfred Weber.
For this reason, he continues, Nord Stream 2 should “be used with reservations and depending on the behavior of Russian leaders”.
Manfred Weber calls on the European Union to have more confidence in its forces in matters of foreign policy and to “renounce its naivety vis-à-vis Putin and other geopolitical actors”.
It would be an “important European maturation process” if the EU used its trade and economic policy as a foreign policy instrument in the case of Nord Stream 2.
A project almost completed
The Nord Stream 2 project involves the construction of two pipes 1,230 kilometers long which will connect the Russian coast to Germany at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. They will have a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
The pipeline is under sanctions from the United States seeking to sell its liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the EU. It is also in the sights of Ukraine and some other European countries.
Russia has repeatedly stressed that this is a trade project that is beneficial to Europe. For its part, Berlin supports the completion of the pipeline and rejects unilateral extraterritorial sanctions by the United States.
In mid-February, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak assured that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline was more than 95% complete.
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