Strasbourg, 13/03/2014 (Agence Europe) - Although tension over the Ukrainian dossier, including the secession of Crimea, is pushing the European Commission to raise the political tone, legal and technical discussions between Brussels and Moscow on the South Stream gas pipeline project are continuing at expert level.
An initial meeting of the joint working group set up in mid-January by European Commissioner for Energy Günther Oettinger and Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak to reduce disagreements between the Commission and the Russian government over the compliance of the South Stream project with the third Community legislative package on the liberalisation of the single energy market, will be held in Moscow this Friday 14 March.
Earlier this week, Oettinger raised doubts over the possibility that these discussions would be frozen, to try to bring pressure to bear on Russia following the incursion of its troops into Crimea. “I won't accelerate talks about pipelines such as South Stream for the time being. These will be delayed”, Oettinger threatened, in the German daily newspaper Die Welt. On Thursday, however, his spokesperson, Sabine Berger, stressed that “talks are not frozen. They are continuing at a technical level”, stressing the “political” scope of the commissioner's comments.
At the end of 2013, the Commission called on the countries of the EU which are involved in the project - Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Greece and Slovenia, plus Serbia - to renegotiate the agreements they have concluded with Russia for the construction of the gas pipeline, stating that these agreements did not comply with the principle of the third package. The Commission criticises the Russian gas company Gazprom, which is heading up the South Stream project, for failing to respect the principle of unbundling energy provision and transport activities. For its part, Moscow is defending the validity of the inter-governmental agreements with regard to international law.
South Stream aims to link Russia to Bulgaria to serve European market through two branches, one in the South crossing Greece to reach Italy, the other to the North crossing Serbia, Hungary, Slovenia and Austria. This will be done without going through Ukraine, which is the main transit country for Russian gas destined for the EU. (EH)