An agreement in the dispute over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is about to be reached.
Alexander Graf Lambsdorff (FDP) fears in the interview, however, great damage for Germany.
Munich - Germany and the USA are heading towards an agreement in the dispute over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
The deputy chairman of the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff in an interview with Merkur.
Mr Lambsdorff, the US is apparently giving up its opposition to the completion of Nord Stream 2.
Does that end the dispute over the project?
Nord Stream 2 is 95 percent completed.
US President Joe Biden does not want to endanger German-American relations by blocking the project further.
The American resistance comes not only from the White House, but especially from the US Congress.
There representatives of both parties are still of the opinion that Nord Stream 2 must be canceled.
So Biden is doing a lot to help Germany here, but he stipulates that Germany sanction Russia if Moscow should use the pipeline politically against Ukraine.
Since this is exactly Moscow's intention, we should continue to occupy ourselves with the subject.
You are considered a critic of Nord Stream 2.
From an energy point of view, I don't want to evaluate the benefits of the pipeline at all.
But we need to be aware of the fact that from the Kremlin's point of view, this is geopolitics.
Moscow wants to put Ukraine under pressure by making it dispensable as a gas transit country through Nord Stream 2.
That is why there is a parallel project to Nord Stream in the south, in the Black Sea, Turkstream, which also serves to bypass Ukraine.
Is the US relenting now a triumph for Putin *?
From the Kremlin's point of view, the pipeline has already served an important purpose: it has divided the West. The US Congress and the EU Parliament * are against it, France, Scandinavia, the Balts and Poland too, only Germany and Austria are in favor. So we have a quarrel in the western alliance. The agreement with the USA therefore reminds me of sticking plaster on a broken leg: it covers the scratch on the outside, but behind it much more has broken - especially in the EU. An example: Poland is probably planning a nuclear power plant relatively close to the border with Germany. How is Berlin supposed to convince Warsaw to find another location when we obviously don't care about Polish interests either?
The agreement with the USA reminds me of a sticking plaster on a broken leg, it covers the scratch on the outside, but behind it a lot more broke.
Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, deputy chairman of the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag
Nordstream 2: FDP politician criticizes Angela Merkel's approach - "implausible"
Is Germany isolating itself in Europe?
Yes.
Through poor diplomatic and foreign policy support, we gave some of our partners the impression that we wanted to fool them.
The fact that Angela Merkel * always speaks of a private-sector project makes the Chancellor unbelievable.
She knows that Gazprom belongs to the Russian state and Gazprom is building this pipeline.
That costs trust that people like Helmut Kohl *, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Joschka Fischer have built up.
And it's going to cost us money on top of that.
In what way?
When I look at Ukraine-Russia relations, my assumption is that the gas transit fees that Ukraine receives from Russia will cease to exist after 2024.
The Americans then expect us to compensate for that.
So what should Germany do?
Unlike the Greens, we don't want an almost finished pipeline as an investment ruin in the Baltic Sea.
But we need a watertight treaty with Russia so that it does not dry up Ukraine financially.
We should make the operating license for Nord Stream 2 dependent on this.
(Interview: Sebastian Horsch) * Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA
