WARSAW, Oct 7 — Poland’s anti-monopoly watchdog today said it was demanding Russian gas giant Gazprom pay a €6.45 billion (RM32 billion) fine over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline linking Russia to Germany.
The regulator said it was also imposing a €52 million fine on five other companies, including British-Dutch giant Shell, involved in building the controversial link.
UOKiK warned in 2016 that, if built, Nord Stream 2 could hamper competition and so refused to approve the consortium.
UOKiK then launched an antitrust procedure against the companies in 2018.
“Tomasz Chrostny, President of UOKiK, has imposed a penalty of over PLN 29 bn on Gazprom, and of over PLN 234 mln on 5 remaining companies participating in the construction of the gas pipeline — as a result of the lack of approval for the Nord Stream 2 transaction,” UOKiK said in a statement on its website.
Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states and the US fiercely oppose Nord Stream 2, fearing it will increase Europe’s reliance on Russian energy supplies which Moscow could then use to exert political pressure.
The controversial multi-billion euro energy link between Russia and Germany is to run under the Baltic Sea and is set to double Russian gas shipments to Germany, the EU’s biggest economy.
UOKiK’s move comes just days after Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki cited the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to urge Germany and other EU partners not to turn a blind eye to human rights when doing business with Moscow.
“It’s also worth considering very deeply whether this isn’t a pivotal moment (the Navalny poisoning) when we should all say that there’s no point in pursuing a project like Nord Stream 2 with Russia,” Morawiecki told reporters at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday.
“I hope that many other countries will also confirm that the poisoning of Navalny and Nord Stream 2 are not two separate topics,” he added. — AFP
