Baltic gas pipeline: Will Nord Stream 2 be or not be?

A bit like with Brexit, after many of us have shuffled off this mortal coil, debates over the virtues and vices of Nordstream 2 may still be grinding on. As the controversial gas pipeline linking Russian supplies and European consumers via Germany reaches the seabed below Danish waters, this princely project faces renewed scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic. The now delayed pipeline sits alongside the US' Huawei threats towards EU members states and Washington's penchant for trade tariffs as crux issues as the world grapples with a changing international order. How it is resolved will be pivotal to how EU-US and EU-Russia relations evolve in the coming years, perhaps even months.

Germany may argue that the European Commission has brokered the Ukraine gas transit deal and now there is no basis to say that the pipeline is politically motivated. We have to remember that the pipeline is not about sending an additional gas to Europe, but is about diverting volumes, which have been supplied through Ukraine. Therefore, and taking into account the high costs of both onshore and offshore sections for Gazprom, it is questionable whether it was really only a financially motivated decision to build the pipeline or it was rather meant mostly to halt Ukraine gas transit.

Moar @ https://www.msn.com/en-za/news/other/baltic-gas-pipeline-will-nord-stream-2-be-or-not-be/ar-BB104HDF

George Soros: EU should not willingly facilitate Xi Jinping’s political survival

By George Soros

Monday, February 17, 2020 - 12:00 AM

Making Europe’s most critical infrastructure dependant on Chinese technology opens the door to blackmail and sabotage, argues George Soros.

NEITHER the European public nor European political and business leaders fully understand the threat presented by Xi Jinping’s China.

Although Xi is a dictator who is using cutting-edge technology in an effort to impose total control on Chinese society, Europeans regard China primarily as an important business partner.

They fail to appreciate that, since Xi became president and general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), he has established a regime whose guiding principles are diametrically opposed to the values on which the EU was founded.

The rush to embrace Xi is greater in Britain, which is in the process of separating itself from the EU, than in the EU itself. Prime minister Boris Johnson wants to distance the UK from the EU as much as possible and to build a free-market economy that is unconstrained by EU regulations.

He is unlikely to succeed, because the EU is prepared to take countermeasures against the type of deregulation Johnson’s government seems to have in mind.

But, in the meantime, Britain is eyeing China as a potential partner, in the hope of re-establishing the partnership that former chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne was building between 2010 and 2016.

The Trump administration, as distinct from US president Donald Trump personally, has done much better in managing its ties with China. It developed a bipartisan policy that declared China to be a strategic rival and put tech giant Huawei and several other Chinese companies on the so-called Entity List, which forbids US companies to trade with them without government permission.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/views/analysis/george-soros-eu-should-not-willingly-facilitate-xi-jinpings-political-survival-982104.html