Friday, 29 03 2024
Friday, 29 03 2024
12:54
Starting today, Belarusians are prohibited from owning drones
12:35
No precipitation is expected, the air temperature will rise by 8-10 degrees
12:16
“Russia deceived us and tried to drag us into a new war, already on the territory of Armenia.” Alain Simonyan
11:57
“No one in Armenia has the right to hand over anything by law.” Alain Simonyan
11:38
The ideologies of European party unions were discussed at the KP session
11:19
A military plane fell into the sea in Sevastopol
11:00
The humanitarian aid sent by Armenia to Gaza is in Egypt
USA
10:41
The USA informed Russia about the terrorist threat on March 7
10:22
Russians are losing interest in Dubai
10:03
The EU will present the plan for the supply of weapons to Ukraine by April
16:04
Israel liquidated 200 Hamas militants in Ash-Shifa hospital
15:45
“The special services of Germany did not know about the terrorism being prepared near Moscow.” Scholz
15:26
“The question of leaving the EAEU is not being discussed now.” Maria Karapetyan
15:07
Clinton lobbied to swap Navalny with Krasikov
14:48
Georgian parliamentarians visited Tsitsernakaberd
14:29
“Russia knew about the preparation of terrorism for more than a month.” Budanov
14:10
Vasquez and Nacho will also extend the contract with “Real.”
13:51
The new Ukrainian law discriminates against Russian speakers, Armenian speakers, and Roma
13:32
“It’s hard for me to stay in the football world.” Mkhitaryan gave a briefing
13:13
The Foreign Ministry of Latvia declared the Russian diplomat persona non grata
12:54
Armenia will send humanitarian aid to Gaza
12:35
Kroos will spend another year in Madrid
12:16
Weather without precipitation is expected
11:57
Georgia will receive 9.25 million euros from UEFA
11:38
Alen Simonyan presented the current security situation in the South Caucasus to his French colleagues
USA
11:19
“The main point of the US-Armenia-EU meeting is economic stability.” Miller
The Armenia-EU-USA meeting is not related to third countries
Nikol Pashinyan’s interview was published in The New York Times
10:22
Banks in Turkey, UAE, and China are delaying payments for Russian oil
“NATO member Turkey will not create problems in this case.” Edgar Vardanyan

EU Weary of Power of Russian Gas

Judy Dempsey, nonresident senior associate at Carnegie Europe and editor-in-chief of Strategic Europe, touched upon the influence of Russian gas on Europe. Find the article below.
When Russian troops left Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War more than 20 years ago, Moscow’s influence over the region did not end. It found a new source of power to exert leverage over these newly independent countries. That power was energy.
With few exceptions, the East European countries have since been dependent on Russian natural gas. They had no other option. Pipelines, built during Soviet times, carried gas to Russia’s satellites from east to west and beyond. To this day, European energy companies have been barred from access to those pipelines, and new grids going from north to south have yet to be built.
These circumstances have given Russia considerable leeway to set gas prices for Eastern Europe. In many cases, say energy analysts, they are higher than what Gazprom charged its West European customers, even though the gas did not have to be transported as far.
“Russia’s instrument of power over the region has been gas,” said Alan Riley, an energy expert and professor at City Law School, London. “Let’s see for how much longer.”
This is because the E.U.’s Competition Commission recently decided to investigate whether Gazprom had hindered competition in Eastern Europe by holding back gas deliveries and charging customers unfair prices.
The Lithuanian government led the charge against Gazprom. With a team of top legal advisers, it submitted last year a complaint to the commission. “The commission saw that our allegations about Gazprom abusing its dominant position were grounds to start proceedings against the company,” said Arunas Vinciunas, Lithuanian deputy ambassador to the European Union.
It is not the first time that East European governments have complained to the European Commission, the Union’s executive, over Gazprom. They have long claimed that Russia’s giant state-owned energy company was abusing its dominant position in their countries. But the earlier cases, analysts said, were badly prepared.
A formal E.U. investigation now under way will also include Gazprom’s practices in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia.
The decision was greeted with disbelief and delight by the countries in the region.
“It is so important what Brussels is doing,” said Szymon Kardas, an expert on Russian energy at the Center for Eastern Studies in Warsaw. “This is the Competition Commission that took on Microsoft and its dominant position in Europe. It is now prepared to take on Gazprom.”
President Vladimir V. Putin has already reacted by issuing a decree aimed at protecting Gazprom’s subsidiaries based abroad.
The Kremlin claims that strategic companies like Gazprom are not subject to E.U. law because they are registered “outside the jurisdiction of the E.U. and administered by the government” of Russia.
The E.U. Competition Commission is undeterred.
“This is an investigation that concerns Gazprom, which is a company active in the E.U. single market, which sells gas in the E.U., so we are looking at the behavior of this company. This does not concern Russia,” said Antoine Colombani, the commission’s spokesman. “We are working away. There is no legal deadline for this antitrust case.”
Whatever negotiating strategy Russia adopts, the case is already having repercussions for the East Europeans, and for the European Union. The antitrust case has reinforced East Europeans’ belief in a Union whose confidence has been terribly undermined by the euro crisis.
“For a small country, it means a lot. It shows that we can defend our interests through solidarity inside the E.U.,” said Mr. Vinciunas.
Also, Eastern Europe’s bargaining position vis-à-vis Gazprom over prices and the company’s monopoly over transmission, distribution and supply could also be strengthened.
Furthermore, East Europeans are seizing the opportunity to diversify their energy sources. Plans to explore and extract shale gas are in progress. Expensive liquefied natural gas terminals to store gas imported by ship are being built, all because of Russia’s use of energy as a political tool.
The Union, for its part, could be doing more to wrest Eastern Europe more quickly from Russia’s energy grip. It is planning to build gas and electricity interconnections that will link the Baltic States and Poland to the Adriatic and Aegean Seas via several Central European countries. But they will not be completed for several more years.
Nevertheless, the East Europeans sense that Russia’s last remaining hold over them is weakening, thanks to the commission. It may also show to Moscow that however much it has been able to rely on the bigger countries like Germany to postpone any big E.U. decisions, those days can no longer be taken for granted.

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