A Russian - German Playground
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the Polish opposition leader, said this week that Poland is a 'Russian-German playground', where Poland’s national interests succumb to those of its mightier neighbors.
Kaczynski’ strong words come in the midst of continuing negotiations between Poland and Russia over gas supply. The two countries struck an agreement this past January on volumes and rates for Russia gas for Poland and transiting en route to Europe.
The agreement, covering 10 billion cubic metres of gas a year for Poland until 2037, was initially due to be signed earlier this year, but has been delayed as Poland awaits advice from Brussels, which has said that the arrangements are inconsistent with European Union rules.
As a result, negotiations are continuing to find a resolution amongst the various players.
Poland hopes for a flexible agreement, which would allow it to be able to reduce its gas imports from Russia should it identify shale gas deposits or until a planned liquefied natural gas terminal at the port of Swinoujscie on the Baltic Sea coast next to the border with Germany comes into operation. At an estimated cost of €800 million, the LNG terminal would allow for 30%-40% of Polish gas needs to come by tanker from alternate suppliers such as Qatar.
Kaczynski blunts comments were directed at Germans opposition to the Swinoujscie terminal.
Construction at Swinoujscie was to start this month, but Germany has called for a re-evaluation of the permits and for Poland to carry out an environmental assessment study under the Espoo Convention, a U.N. treaty that handles cross-border environmental concerns. The German demands could delay finalization of the terminal, envisioned for 2014, by two to three years.
Polish Deputy Finance Minister Mikolaj Budzanowski said the action "would also invalidate the construction permit and the environmental decisions.”
In addition, Germany also voted against the EU’s pledge of 80 million Euros for the construction at Swinoujscie.
The economic and political overtones are quite apparent to Mr. Kaczynski and many other Poles.
Swinoujscie terminal would directly compete with the Nord Stream pipeline project, which intends to sell gas to Poland. Nord Stream is led by Russia's Gazprom with prominent German stakeholders, E.ON Ruhrgas and BASF/Wintershall.
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorsky has called Nord Stream, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pipeline.
This is the "European Community" is it not?
It is fair to say, at the least, that the Polish-German dispute doesn’t bode well for the EU's policy of energy solidarity.