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Armin Laschet, head of the Christian Democratic Union, could become Germany’s next chancellor after Angela Merkel’s current term ends.
Germany should not refuse to support the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline construction project, said Armin Laschet, head of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union party. He said this in an interview with Reuters.
When asked whether Germany should abandon the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, Laschet replied that Germany for 50 years, even during the aggressive times of the Cold War, bought gas from the Soviet Union and now from Russia. In his opinion, “the German government is following the right path.”
At the same time, he stressed that he criticized the repressions against Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, and also supported the EU sanctions against the Russian Federation for the crisis in Ukraine.
Speaking about Nord Stream 2, he also noted that Germany should guarantee the geopolitical interests of Ukraine.
Laschet called himself a political realist (realpolitiker) and claimed that to make the world a better place, it must be accepted as it is. According to Laschet, both values and interests are important in diplomacy, “but moralizing for welfare and domestic slogans is not foreign policy.”
The German government now, the agency notes, faces increasing pressure on Nord Stream 2, both from within, from the Green environmental party, potential partners of the CDU coalition for the CDU, and from abroad, from the States. States and most of Europe.
Laschet sees Germany as “deeply rooted in the West” and the United States considers it “our closest non-European partner.”
In February 2020, Angela Merkel announced that she would remain as German Chancellor until the end of her term in 2021. She does not intend to run for this position again.
January 16 Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia Armin Laschet was elected party head “Christian Democratic Union”.
Traditionally, in Germany, it is the leader of the CDU who becomes the Conservative candidate in parliamentary elections in Germany. This is a tradition, but not a law, and there have been exceptions.
Nord Stream 2 project, chaired by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, – a gas pipeline that should connect Russia with Germany along the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The length of the route is more than 1200 km, the capacity of the new gas pipeline will be 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year. The cost of the project is reported to be € 9.9 billion, it is financed by Russia’s Gazprom and five European companies: Anglo-Dutch Shell, German Wintershall and Uniper, French Engie and Austrian OMV.
Authorities in the United States, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Moldova, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia consider Nord Stream 2 a threat to Europe’s energy security.
Construction of the gas pipeline began in 2018. In December 2019, construction was frozen when the United States imposed sanctions on European contractors involved in the project. At that time, 93% of the pipeline was completed, the official pipeline operator Nord Stream 2 AG reported.
A year later, on December 11, 2020, construction resumed. Until the construction of two gas pipeline chains is finished, there are “a little” left for a total of 160 kilometers, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on December 17.
On December 11, the United States Senate, following the House of Representatives, supported the country’s defense budget project for 2021, which provides for tougher sanctions against Nord Stream 2, but the President of the United States, Donald Trump , vetoed it. On January 1, 2021, the US Congress “easily rejected” Trump’s veto. 81 senators voted in favor, 13 against.
On January 19, the United States Department of the Treasury imposed new sanctions on companies involved in the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. In particular, the sanctions affected the Russian ship Fortuna and its owner, the KVT-RUS company, as well as the Rustanker company, the Maxim Gorky tanker and the Sierra tanker for the transportation of crude. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry welcomed this decision, and the Russian “Gazprom” allowed for the first time the possibility of suspending the implementation or completely canceling the Nord Stream 2 project.
However, on January 24 it emerged that the Russian pipe laying vessel Fortuna had resumed construction of the Nord Stream 2 in Danish waters. In 2020, the pipelayer laid 2.6 km of pipes in German waters, about 120 km left unfinished in Danish waters and about 28 km in Germany.
According to White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, US President Joe Biden considers the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline “a bad business for Europe.”
The Handelsblatt newspaper wrote on February 1 that Biden could lift the sanctions against Nord Stream 2 if it gets assurances that Russia will not use the pipeline against Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. The State Department denied this information, saying they would hamper the construction of Nord Stream 2 not just with sanctions.
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