“For a gas tube, for a gas tube!”, cried out an MEP this Tuesday in the outskirts of the meeting of the Parliament in Strasbourg. He referred thus, in conversation with The Newspaper of Spain’, medium that belongs to the same editorial group as this newspaper, to the reluctance of their colleagues from the German Socialist Party (SPD) to include the possibility of cancel the gas pipeline that connects Russia with Germany on the joint declaration to ask Vladimir Putin not to attack Ukraine. The Nord Stream 2. A gas tube.
Finally there has been an agreement between the European socialists, and of these with all the groups except the extreme right (ID) and the unitary left (GUE). The final declaration has even described the sanctions that the signatory MEPs request that Brussels impose in the event of an attack: “They should include the exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT banking system, sanctions against individuals close to the Russian president and their families, the freezing of their financial and physical assets in the European Union, and a travel ban,” reads the joint statement. “And we reiterate our request for the immediate suspension of the Nord Stream 2 project in the event that Russia attacks Ukraine.”
Nord Stream 2, a project to supply Russian gas to Germany, has been at the epicenter of European divisions in this geopolitical clash. Berlin has refused to include it in the retaliation package against Moscow. Nor did Germany want send weapons to Ukraine. All this reluctance provoked the wrath of Kiev, and the anger of the United States.
An anger that the German chancellor Olaf Scholz tried to calm down with a whirlwind trip to the White House on February 8. There, Joe Biden was explicit. If Russia invades Ukraine, there will be no Nord Stream 2, he told a news conference. And this despite the fact that it is a German project in which the United States neither punctures nor cuts. “And how are you going to stop it if the project is controlled by Germany?” asked a journalist. “We will stop it. I promise you we will.” Next to him, the German prime minister was more restrained: “We are prepared to do anything in terms of sanctions if there is a Russian military aggression,” he said, without even naming the pipeline.
Staging in Parliament
This Wednesday, the European Parliament in Strasbourg tried to stage unity and forcefulness before the scenario of tension with Russia. The debate in the plenary session on Ukraine was attended by the entire European staff: the President of the Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, the President of the Council, Charles Michel; that of Parliament itself, Roberta Metsola; and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs, the Spanish Josep Borell.
Borrell has tried to draw as a symbol of unity the fact that, to the 27 letters that Moscow sent to each of the European countries to see their position on the issue, Europe responded with only one letter, with a unified position. epistolary diplomacy. “Lavrov (Russian Foreign Minister) was shot in the butt,” the High Representative said in plenary on Wednesday. “It has been said that the EU was missing in action, led by the United States. These are unfair criticisms that I am going to respond to: France and Germany have carried out individual initiatives, but within the framework of the common position”, he added.
Borrell was referring to the various trips that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German, Olaf Sholz, have made independently. Macron traveled to Moscow, where he was coldly received by Vladimir Putin at the already mythical table several meters long; the same table where, a few days later, Sholz chatted with the boss, the Russian. separate trips also to Kiev or Washington. Conversations for hours, one on one. What interests did they defend? Those of their respective countries? The ones from the EU?
“Although at first there was more disunity, I think unity has been forged in recent weeks, and that there has been coordination in the shadows”, says the Dutch MEP Thijs Reuten, from the S&D, in a conversation with EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA. “Putin is an unpredictable autocrat and a forceful response must be given. And, of course, explain to citizens that any sanction will have a retaliation and a cost”, he adds.
This diplomatic bilateralism is also justified because Germany and France form part, together with Russia and Ukraine, of the so-called “Normandy Quartet”, the negotiating table to resolve the war in the Ukrainian Donbas. A conflict that has ended with nearly 14,000 lives and with the declaration of the two self-proclaimed independent republics of Donesk and Lugansk. The Quartet has two agreements in force, known as Misk and Misk 2, whose non-compliance for Moscow justifies its military bravado in recent weeks. The more than 100,000 threatening soldiers on the border between Russia and Ukraine, in Belarus and in Crimea.
The Russian strategy has had a collateral effect: the renewed coordination OTAN– EU. Nacho Sánchez Amor, foreign spokesman for the Spanish socialists in the European Parliament, recalls how the doctrine of the former Soviet Union considered Europe a mere “civil appendage” of NATO. Now not anymore, he assures in conversation with EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA the MEP. “The EU has left its adolescence behind” and continues to grow into an actor that must be respected, he believes. A renewed idyll between the Atlantic Alliance and Europe, which is another of the strategic mistakes made by Vladimir Putin. Nothing unites more than a common adversary.
Without gas there is no industrial paradise
The dependence of the countries of northern Europe on Russian gas is a serious problem, and it would be even more so if there were to be a military conflict. The president of the Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, has underlined this Wednesday how, at a time of high demand and price, curiously the main Russian supplier, Gazprom, “is restricting supply to a minimum in ten years”, despite the high price you could get. “That makes it an unreliable energy provider”he added, to then highlight that he is guaranteeing the alternative supply of liquefied gas sent by ship from other countries in the event of restrictions.
Among the actors involved, Germany is the country that receives the largest proportion of Russian gas. An industrial power, the factory of Europe, which needs to guarantee a constant supply of energy, especially after having banned nuclear power. The same Polanda neighbor of Ukraine and very reluctant to Moscow’s expansionism, uses Russian gas, which it buys from Germany.
France has pre-eminence of nuclear energy. Macron thus has his hands freer when it comes to pressing. And a clear interest in gaining prominence in the geopolitical arena in the middle of the electoral campaign.