Other than Salvini, Savoini & co. With Russia the facts are done by Angela Merkel with Gazprom. Now with Ursula von der Leyen, the new president of the EU Commission, the game is done. Fausto Carioti on Libero explains the details of the operation. Side by side, Putin's lobbyists, the Chancellor's team and their associates are struggling to complete Operation North Stream 2, which once completed (not far away, we are 60%) will make Europe more dependent from Russian gas, squeezing it even tighter to the Kremlin noose.
US President Donald Trump, on the other hand, is worried and has good reasons to be. Given the treated goods, the real problem is not economic or environmental, but strategic: those who control energy flows have an immense power of political blackmail on the buyer, and the reasoning that the Russians need European money and therefore will not do jokes applies as long as the tension does not rise: hypothesis far from unlikely, all the more so now that Putin and Trump are free from the treaty on nuclear missiles signed in 1986 by Michail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan.
Already today, the EU countries buy from Russia the 40% of imported gas, which makes it the main supplier of the continent. With North Stream 2 the dose will increase significantly. The new pipeline, which with its 1.200 kilometers will be the longest offshore pipeline in the world, will connect the Baltic coasts of Russia with the terminal in Greifswald, Germany, and will double the capacity of its elderly brother North Stream, adding 55 billion meters methane cubes a year: how many are enough, reassures the parent company Gazprom, for 26 millions of families. Another 13% of European gas demand contracted in Moscow, analysts on the Radio Free Europe website, near the US State Department, warn.
Even if Gazprom is the shareholder of the project, Putin's economic arm, in this cyclopic work and in the business that will start once the tap is opened, several European companies are involved, first of all the German giants in the energy sector, such as Basf / Wintershall and Uniper, together with the French Engie, the Anglo-Dutch Shell and the Austrian Omv.
Italy at the stake
As for Italy, it had a limited role with Saipem in laying pipes on the seabed, but the most important thing is what Eni's CEO, Claudio Descalzi, said when the project started: it is a pipeline « really made for northern Europe », which will raise the price of Russian gas in Italy and in other countries south of the continent, due to higher transport costs.
Trump, supported by a part of the Washington congress, pushes for the introduction of sanctions against European companies that collaborate with Gazprom. He also thinks of money, as well as of politics: thanks to new mining techniques, the United States has plenty of gas and is ready to transport it in liquid form, by ship, as far as Europe, and promise to sell it at a discounted price. Solution that the Germans do not like, who prefer the Russian tube, also because it consolidates Germany's position as the European natural gas hub and allows their companies to participate in the division of the cake.
Trump looks for allies
In favor of Trump's hard line, the governments of Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are lined up and, a step beyond the borders of the EU, that of Ukraine: everyone fears an enlargement of the sphere of damage to their Russian influence, if not to end up crushed by a sort of Molotov-Ribbentrop energy pact.
In Brussels, meanwhile, he shrugs. Inside the commission they say they are against the project, but to sanction groups like Basf and go against the German government, especially now that von der Leyen has taken over the most important seat, it is not discussed. "This is exactly what we should not do as a European Union. We should speak with one voice, "said Klaus-Dieter Borchardt, Deputy Director-General (German) of the Commission's Energy Department, commenting on the umpteenth rift with the Political magazine.
In summary, Germany preaches well and scratches very badly at the damage also and above all of Italy.