Brussels, 09/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - Russia hopes that the European Commission will take appropriate decisions for the implementation of the gas pipeline project South Stream, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, told the press after his meeting with Slovenian President Borut Pahor and his Foreign Minister Karl Erjavec, in Maribor on Tuesday 8 July.
During his trip to Slovenia on Tuesday, as he had done the day before in Bulgaria, Lavrov expressed Moscow's wish to resume “constructive dialogue” with the Commission, whilst going on to say that he expected from it a “reasonable approach without politicising the South Stream project”. “Russia wants all of the countries which have signed South Stream agreements to continue to be part of the project. Attempts to apply, retrospectively, the requirements of the third energy package to South Stream are unfair and out of all proportion with international law”, he said.
In Sofia the day before, Lavrov stressed that the signature of the inter-governmental agreements between Russia and the stakeholder countries in the South Stream project - Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia plus Serbia - had preceded the adoption of the third energy package in 2009. “We respect the third package, but it cannot be retrospective, under international law”, he stressed, noting that the Commission had made exceptions to the third package when it comes to third-country access, “in many other examples”, notably for the trans-Adriatic gas pipeline.
Against the backdrop of the Ukrainian crisis and the gas dispute between Moscow and Kiev, South Stream is the subject of a stand-off between the Commission and the Russian government. The European executive argues that the project does not comply with European legislation on the single market or competition. In early June, it opened infringement proceedings against Bulgaria, over its procedure for granting public procurement contracts in the framework of the construction work on the section of South Stream which passes through Bulgarian territory, and ordered the work be suspended. Further infringement procedures against other South Stream countries could follow, the Commission threatened several times in June.
Led by Gazprom (50%), with the participation of Italy's ENI (20%), EDF of France (15%) and Germany's Wintershall (15%), South Stream will link Russia to Bulgaria under the Black Sea, bypassing Ukraine, to serve the European market by two branches: the first, to the south, to Italy via Greece; the second, to the north, to Austria, Croatia and Slovenia, via Serbia and Hungary. (EH)