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Tubes for Nord Stream 2 near Sassnitz, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
Photo:
HANNIBAL HANSCHKE / REUTERS
The demand is supported by the parliamentary groups of the Conservatives, Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens: The EU Parliament wants to call for a construction freeze on the German-Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 because of the arrest of Alexej Navalny.
The EU must stop the completion of the Baltic Sea pipeline immediately, according to a draft resolution that SPIEGEL has also received.
In addition to the construction freeze on Nord Stream 2, MPs are also calling for sanctions against "natural and legal persons who were involved in the decision on the arrest and imprisonment of Alexej Navalny."
Those responsible for attacks on members of the opposition, "Russian oligarchs", "members of President Putin's inner circle" and "media propagandists" should also be sanctioned.
Navalny was arrested in Moscow on Sunday immediately after his return from Germany.
In Berlin he was treated after a poison attack in Siberia in August, for which he blames the Kremlin.
In a hastily arranged hearing at a police station on Monday, a court sentenced Navalny to 30 days' imprisonment for violating probation conditions from 2014.
The Kremlin critic is now in the Matrosskaya Tishina prison in Moscow - a notorious detention center in which prisoners on remand have already died on several occasions.
"After the Russian attack on Navalny, we also have to talk about the energy issue," EPP parliamentary group leader Manfred Weber told SPIEGEL.
“It is the most powerful instrument we have.
And the Nord Stream 2 project is therefore one of the ways to generate further pressure, «said the CSU politician.
"Mere appeals to Russia are not enough."
The members of the European Parliament have in mind the freezing of assets in the EU and restrictions on freedom of travel.
"The European Union should no longer be a welcome place for Russian wealth of unclear origin," says the text that will be voted on on Thursday.
Until then, requests for changes are still possible.
The sanctions called for in the draft resolution would have to be decided unanimously by the 27 EU member states.
According to the EU foreign affairs officer Josep Borrell, the foreign ministers should discuss the issue at their meeting on Monday.
On Tuesday, however, Borrell pointed out in the EU Parliament that Nord Stream 2 was a private project that could only be prevented by Germany, but not by Brussels.
Nord Stream 2 has long been controversial in the EU.
The US is also rejecting the German-Russian project, and on Tuesday Washington imposed sanctions on a Russian laying ship involved in the construction of the pipeline.
Despite the growing domestic criticism, the federal government again stood behind the gas pipeline on Wednesday.
The attitude of the federal government to the project is "unchanged," said a spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of Economics on Wednesday in Berlin.
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as / AFP