Nord Stream hearings causes deja-vu in Brussels

Recently, Polish prime-minister Donald Tusk visited Moscow and offered Russia a new variant for the construction of a new «Yamal-Europe» gas pipeline as an alternative to the «Nord Stream» gas pipeline. In the opinion of the Polish government, this will allow unsanctioned siphoning-off of gas and unpredictable increases by transit countries of the fee for the transit of the gas to be avoided. The Polish government has already attained approval of the project from the governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

However, before Tusk even left for Moscow, it was clear that Russia would not accept the alternative variant.

Russian president Vladimir Putin uttered the standard stock phrase about being interested in developing relations with Poland.

The position of Gazprom with respect to the Polish variant was voiced by one of the clerks of the gas monopolist: this variant is unacceptable for us. That’s it. End discussion.

End discussion?

In Brussels

Not long after Tusk’s appearance in Russia, hearings were held in Brussels in the Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament. The topic of discussion – the environmental aspects of the construction of the «Nord Stream» gas pipeline. The event was interesting in part because executive director of the «Nord Stream» company Matthias Warnig and technical director Dirk von Ameln spoke at it.

On top of that, many interesting, in my opinion, petitions by representatives of different countries were voiced.

Running the bureaucratic gauntlet

You could write a whole play about the procedure for getting through all the cordons on the way to any meeting room in the building of the European Parliament in Brussels – a play about the eternal reign of bureaucratism. I don’t think I’ve ever gone through such encumbrances and minutiae in the procedure for getting a pass, the inspection of things and verification of identity – not even in airports, let alone Russian prisons.

No, no, don’t get me wrong – I’m not at all against my own safety and security. But believe me, I could easily have gotten by with only one visitor’s pass, and not the three I was issued: the first to enter the building of the European Parliament, the second as an accredited journalist (to the very same place), and the third as a journalist having permission to shoot photos and video.
Having gone through all the circles of this bureaucratic-control hell, I thought to myself: so how is it that terrorists nevertheless somehow manage to commit their abhorrent deeds?

In the hall named after Petra

Gathered in the Petra Kelly conference hall – named after the famous German ecologist and founder of the party of the “greens” – was everybody and anybody who had even the slightest thing to do with the Nord Stream gas pipeline project. The hearings were presided over by committee chairman Marcin Libicki, then European Commissioner for Energy Andris Piebalgs took the podium, then former Lithuanian president Vitautas Landsbergis spoke…

Technical director of Nord Stream Dirk von Ameln, whom I had arranged to interview, sat surrounded by Matthias Warnig, his assistant Jens Müller, and about twenty employees of the company Nord Stream. They were calm and impassive. (By the way, their baby – the future gas pipeline – doesn’t really belong to the Warnigs and the von Amels: the true owners of the gas pipeline don’t show their faces in public).

Déja-vu

Right from the start of the discussions, the motions, and the petitions, it became clear that this was n