EU Commission rushed out an anti-trust action against Gazprom to prevent Greece from joining Russia’s pipeline to Turkey.
The European Commission has published today (22nd April 2015) a statement that provides details of the Statement of Objections it has sent to Gazprom with respect to the anti-trust action it has now brought against that company.
I reproduce it below together with Gazprom’s reply.
This news comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed the tangled relations between the EU and Gazprom.
The background to this story is that the EU bureaucracy has always been antagonistic to Gazprom.
The reasons for this are twofold:
The EU bureaucracy has never been happy with a large state-owned company based outside the EU operating outside its control within the EU area and cutting individual deals with individual EU companies and governments.
Going far beyond that, however, is the deep resentment of the EU and of the West as a whole at the refusal of the Russians to let Western oil and gas extraction companies operate inside Russia in the way they do in some other oil and gas producing countries.
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