Nord Stream 2 will divide the EU, but new US sanctions will do more harm
Nord Stream 2 will increase Russia’s influence over its neighbours and divide the European Union. But US sanctions against the pipeline will do more harm than good.
Rem Korteweg is head of the ‘Europe in the World’ unit at the Clingendael Institute
On Tuesday (25 July), the US House of Representatives passed a sanctions bill which will tighten existing sanctions against Russian companies and individuals, make it more difficult for the White House to lift them, and give US president Donald Trump the authority to enact new sanctions, including on Russian energy projects. Later this week, the bill is expected to pass the Senate and await Trump’s ratification.
The bill states that Russia is using energy exports to coerce its neighbours. It takes specific aim at Nord Stream 2, a planned pipeline that would cross the Baltic Sea and deliver natural gas from Russia directly to Germany. According to the bill’s authors the Gazprom-led project has “detrimental impacts on the EU’s energy security”.
In a recent prospectus, Gazprom stated that US sanctions could delay or stop the construction of Nord Stream 2. The pipeline should perhaps never be built, but the fact that Washington would be making Europe’s energy choices for it, rightly sparks ire in Brussels. The Commission, not Washington, is the chief regulator of the European energy market and Brussels will ferociously protect its turf.
Should Trump ratify the bill and use his new authority to put sanctions on Nord Stream 2, it would raise tensions with the Commission, Germany and others. It would also create yet another source of transatlantic friction, this time, tragically, in an area where Europe and the US have ample incentive to co-operate. That outcome would serve Vladimir Putin’s purposes just fine.
Nord Stream 2 is a highly questionable project. Russian gas reaches Europe through a number of transit routes, primarily through Ukraine, Belarus and Germany. Gazprom says that Europe needs more pipeline imports because domestic European production is declining. But Nord Stream 2 would hardly unlock new Russian gas resources; instead it offers an alternative route for existing gas. Gazprom seems to see this as its primary benefit. The company has said it wants to stop gas supplies through Ukraine by 2019, as it questions Ukraine’s reliability as a transit country.
