Noordelijke Russische gaspijpleiding weer stap dichterbij (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Sweden and Finland have given approval for Russia to build a controversial gas pipeline through their waters in the Baltic Sea.

Swedish environment minister Andreas Carlgren on Thursday (5 November) explained that a 23-month-long assessment cleared the project of potential harm to seabed munition dumps, bird-breeding and shipping.

"No serious Swedish government would violate international treaties by saying no to the gas pipeline," he said.

Just a few hours after the Swedish decision, the Finnish government announced its official approval. But it warned in a statement that "the consent for development does not in itself give permission to actually start building the pipeline" through its Baltic zone.

A Finnish environmental court must still rule on the scheme in a verdict expected no later than early 2010, with the ruling then open to legal appeal by NGOs or local fishing communities.

Thursday's Swedish and Finnish decisions bring Russia a step closer to its target of starting construction next year and shipping the first volumes of gas in 2011.

Denmark gave its go-ahead earlier this year. Russia itself and Germany are still to give consent, in decisions expected by the end of 2009.

The pipeline is to pump 55 billion cubic metres of gas, about 10 percent of EU annual consumption, from Vyborg, Russia, to Greifswald, Germany and on to Denmark, the Netherlands, France and the UK.

EU institutions have classified it as a "priority project" which will improve energy security by diversifying routes. The Russia-Ukraine gas crisis last year persuaded some EU officials to the Russian point of view that Ukraine is not a reliable gas transit partner.

The Nord Stream project is viewed with caution by the former Iron Curtain states Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, however.

"We have always seen this as a political project," Riina Kaljurand, the deputy director of Estonia's International Centre of Defence Studies, told EUobserver. "It might increase Russian military presence in the Baltic Sea. This new strategic infrastructure will have to be protected somehow, so it will give them legitimacy to extend military force."

The four countries, which currently get Russian gas through the land-based Yamal pipeline, are also concerned that Russia could in future cut off Yamal for political reasons, while keeping gas flowing to its EU allies, Germany and France, through the Baltic route.

"If our parliament issues a declaration on World War II which they don't like, they will punish us, as they did Ukraine," a senior Lithuanian diplomat said.

Some of the project's personnel appointments have done little to soothe fears.

Matthias Warnig, the managing director of the Nord Stream consortium building the pipeline, was, according to declassified files, a medal-winning lieutenant in the hated East German secret police, the Stasi, in the 1970s and 1980s - the same time as Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin worked for the KGB in the German town of Dresden.