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While the United States Senate plans new sanctions, Germany risks losing a major trump card in the pipeline negotiations.
Germany has postponed for three months the full capacity launch of the second branch of the Eugal gas pipeline, which is supposed to carry gas from Russia’s Nord Stream-2 pipeline. And the German parliament rejected the Alternative for Germany party’s initiative to support the pipeline.
In the United States, which is hampering the bill with its sanctions, Democrat Joe Biden will soon come to power, and Germany hopes to improve relations. However, he, like President Donald Trump, is an opponent of Nord Stream 2. Correspondent.net quotes an article on this from the authoritative German publication Die Welt.
The battle for Nord Stream 2 is imminent
Germany hopes that transatlantic relations with Joe Biden will improve. But the Democrat opposes Nord Stream 2. As the US Senate works to develop sanctions, Germany risks losing an important trump card in the pipeline negotiations.
The EU was relieved to learn of the results of the presidential elections in the United States. In the field of international relations, everyone is especially looking forward to a new course under Biden because of his great diplomatic experience.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said optimistically that he expects a “new transatlantic beginning” after Donald Trump, who seriously damaged relations between Germany and the United States. “I am confident that with Joe Biden we will succeed in this,” said the diplomat.
Definitely, the foreign policy of the United States under the new president-elect will change. Biden is known as an advocate for multilateralism, international organizations, and NATO.
One of your first decisions will likely be a return to the Paris Climate Agreement. However, there is a major roadblock in the relationship between Washington and Berdine: Nord Stream 2.
Trump, desperately fighting the bill, will soon leave the White House. But his successor, Biden, is also against the pipeline. And in the Senate, representatives of the Democratic and Republican parties are in solidarity with SP-2: the project must be frustrated.
Bloomberg and the tabloid Bild learned that in 2020 they will decide on new sanctions against insurance companies, as well as against companies involved in certification. At the same time, the certification of an independent company is a prerequisite for the commissioning of a new gas pipeline.
The sanctions provided for are provided for in the United States National Defense Law and complement the measures adopted last December.
Until recently, the German government left open the question of completing the construction of the pipeline, but soon it will also have to give a clear and clear answer. So the decisive battle between the United States and Germany for Sevpotok-2 is approaching.
The United States has long tried to prevent completion of the pipeline. They justify their actions by worrying about the energy security of Europe. Washington claims that after the launch of the SP-2, Germany will become too dependent on Russia.
After the United States threatened sanctions earlier this year, the project was abandoned by a Swiss company whose pipelayers were laying a pipeline from Russia to the German Baltic port of Sassnitz. Since then, the work has stopped.
In the summer, several US senators wrote to the port authorities. He was threatened with “devastating legal and economic sanctions” if the Germans did not stop supporting the Russian project. At some point, they even spoke of penalties against German officials, but now they have been taken out of the brackets on this matter.
The German government has always opposed external interference and rejected the criticisms of some EU partners against the second current. German Chancellor Angela Merkel never doubted the need for the project.
But then came the poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The dispute over the investigation into the circumstances of the incident caused the deepest diplomatic crisis in relations between Berlin and Moscow. In this context, the voices of opponents of the project, even in German ruling circles, sounded much louder.
However, the federal government dropped the one-time sanctions against Russia and joined the general EU sanctions. Indeed, until recently, project supporters had reason to hope that US resistance would weaken.
But now this hope is being destroyed by the Senate, which is developing new sanctions. While Biden will have great influence over extraterritorial sanctions, he is unlikely to repeal a law backed by his party, says Jonathan Hackenbroich of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
In his opinion, it will definitely be very difficult to complete the construction of the second Sevpotok. Germany and Russia would have to find companies willing to become victims of the sanctions and guarantee them “compensation for the losses caused by the sanctions and protection against political attacks,” the expert said.
To avoid such scenarios, the German government, according to the daily Die Zeit, tried in August to force the United States to change its position. Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told his US counterpart Stephen Mnuchin about Berlin’s willingness to invest up to one billion euros in the construction of two special ports for LNG imports.
The United States is interested in exporting its LNG to Germany through terminals in the ports of Brunsbuttel and Wilhelmshaven. In this case, Washington would be willing to withdraw the sanctions.
However, in early November, the person in charge of the construction of the terminal in Wilhelmshaven withdrew from the project. It is not yet known whether it will be possible to find a replacement at another port. Now US sanctions are looming over Germany again.
In the near future, Berlin will have nothing to offer Washington to abandon its intention to destroy Nord Stream 2.
And Russia? She is reserved. Not long ago, the Russian President’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, again criticized the US sanctions, but there was no mention of threats or possible consequences.
After stopping construction of the gas pipeline, Moscow sent its own pipe-laying vessel to the Baltic Sea and announced that it would complete the project on its own. Academician Chersky has been in the Baltic port of Mukran since then, but it is not yet clear whether the ship is ready for the difficult task ahead.
Counter-sanctions, which Moscow announced at the beginning of the year, also did not follow. It seems that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has realized that the decision on the SP-2 will be made by others. At the same time, only 150 of a total of 1,224 kilometers of pipelines to mainland Germany remain to be installed.
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