The General Court of the European Union declares that the actions brought by NordStream AG and NordStream 2 AG against Directive 2019/692, which extends certain rules of the internal market in natural gas to pipelines from third countries, are inadmissible The operators of the NordStream 1 and NordStream 2 pipelines are not, in any event, directly concerned by that directive On 17 April 2019 the Parliament and the Council adopted Directive 2019/6922 (‘the amending directive’) amending Directive 2009/73 concerning common rules for the internal market in natural gas. 3 That directive entered into force on 23 May 2019 and was, in principle, to be transposed by the Member States into…
-
-
Putin’s Strategy Extends Further Across Europe
POISON AND DARK MONEY spy scandal in the Czech Republic involving Russian diplomats has reached new heights. At the end of April, the Czech publication Respekt reported that, according to an unnamed source in the security services, a man carrying a diplomatic passport arrived in Prague with a suitcase containing the fatal poison ricin. According to the report, the poison was intended for Czech politicians whose actions aroused the wrath of Moscow – the dismantling of the monument to the Russian commander Ivan Konev and the renaming of the square in front of the Russian Embassy in honour of the murdered Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. The police provided security to all potential…
-
Prague mayor under police protection amid reports of Russian plot
Zdenêk Hřib says there is ‘risk to my life’ as magazine alleges he was poisoning target. The mayor of Prague has said he is under police protection from a “risk to my life”, with one Czech investigative outlet reporting he had been targeted in a Russian poisoning plot. Zdeněk Hřib confirmed on Monday that police had placed him under protection several weeks ago after identifying a threat against him, but declined to say whether had been been targeted by Russia or reveal the nature of threat. Continue reading the published article on The Guardian news website.
-
The Neue Ostpolitik approach to Nord Stream 2: A legal fiction carried a little too far
EnergySource by Dr. Benjamin L. Schmitt On April 10, 2018, signs emerged that the German government was finally beginning to recognize the geostrategic implications of the proposed Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Standing next to then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated: “I made very clear that a Nord Stream 2 project is not possible without clarity on the future transit role of Ukraine…so you can see that it is not just an economic issue, but there are also political considerations.” In one short statement, the chancellor had seemingly repudiated years of arguments that she and other German politicians had made since the pipeline’s announcement: namely, the claim that…
