The Economist: Why Europe no longer fears the Russian gasman
A MILD winter and robust European Union policy have blunted the edge of what was once Vladimir Putin’s most effective foreign-policy weapon: the politicised export of gas. Contrary to some expectations, Russian gas has been flowing to Europe across all four main export pipelines this winter, while the Kremlin’s flagship new pipeline project, South Stream, has come to a mysterious and embarrassing end. Now the focus is on the EU to see if it will push ahead with the prosecution of Gazprom, Russia’s main gas exporter, for years of anti-competitive practices. Why has Russia lost its hold on European gas?
European policymakers still remember the shocks of 2006 and 2009, when Russia cut gas supplies to Ukraine amid a row about prices and debts, leading to heating crises and factory closures in countries such as Slovakia and Hungary, and making western European countries such as Germany scramble to find alternative supplies. Europe gets a third of its gas from Russia, half of it from pipelines across Ukraine. Politicians decided that Russia’s grip on gas supplies to countries in the east of Europe gave the Kremlin an alarming political leverage.
Since then the EU has made some big changes.