U.S. President Donald Trump will fly to Europe later this month to pursue a goal his predecessors going back to John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan failed to achieve — derailing a Kremlin-backed energy-export pipeline. The Trump administration and the U.S. Congress are fighting to block the 9.5 billion-euro ($10.6 billion) Nord Stream 2 project amid fears it will make NATO allies and other European countries more reliant on Russian energy and damage Ukraine by depriving it of transit fees. Continue reading the article on the Radio Free Europe news website.
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Not Only Geopolitics: U.S. Threatens Sanctions Over Russian Nord Stream 2 Project
If Republicans and Democrats from the Trump administration and the U.S. Congress, which stand on different sides of the political barricade, can unite their forces, they may speak with one voice when criticizing Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 energy pipeline project. In May, bipartisan efforts were made to intensify work on sanctions targeted at entities involved in building the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany while U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry declared in Brussels and Kiev that introducing a restrictions package is just a matter of time. Continue reading the article on the Warsaw Institute news website.
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Negative energy: Berlin’s Trumpian turn on Nord Stream 2
While it loves to rant about Trump’s disruptive and confrontational behaviour, the German government hardly behaves any differently when its interests are at stake. Berlin’s handling of the controversial Nord Stream 2 project reveals double standards and neglect of the pipeline’s security repercussions. Berlin has handled the dispute over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with unilateralism and clumsiness worthy of US President Donald Trump. On 8 February, the EU Committee of Permanent Representatives was to vote on a proposal to tighten the rules of the common energy market – which have thus far enabled states and companies, particularly Germany and Gazprom, to circumvent EU law. Paris signalled on 7…
