Posted on 09/01/2007 5:29:05 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
European Union moves to restrict foreign investors' access to its energy industry have not gone down well in Moscow. The Kremlin described the Europeans as "near hysterical," while Russian energy monopolist Gazprom lashed out at what they called "economic nationalism."
The Russian wrath is aimed at EU measures to split up its energy giants, which Brussels now says should apply to non-European firms too, in order to prevent foreign energy giants from snatching up European firms.
Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin's deputy press secretary, told the Financial Times that "measures to discriminate against Russian companies would be totally unfair," and warned that Moscow would use "any legal means possible in accordance with international law to ensure equal access to markets for its companies."
He said that European reaction to Russian energy expansion verged on the "near hysterical" and insisted Russia was a reliable energy supplier. "Even at the height of the Cold War, Russia did not once cut off energy supplies," he said.
Russia's state energy monopoly Gazprom echoed the Kremlin's fury. "Unfortunately we see a tendency towards economic nationalism in many European countries," the company's deputy director Alexander Medvedev told the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung on Thursday. He said that it was "short-sighted" for any country to erect barriers to protect its own companies when there was "no danger to its economic interests." Medvedev confirmed that Gazprom was interested in investing in Europe. "We have the products that they need. And we have the capacity to bring these products to where they are needed," he said, adding: "A strong Russia and a strong Gazprom are good for Europe."
The ruffled feathers in Russia come after the EU confirmed that it was looking at a range of measures to protect European energy companies from being taken over by foreign investors.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
Sorry Vladamir, you can’t be trusted. You were broken in the cold war and you can be broken again if you think you’re going to get lots of money for arms from Europe for fuel. Economic nationalism sounds like a smart move to me. If Putin gets pi$$ed it must be the right thing to do.
Russia can not be trusted.Only fools would trust these curmudgeons.
“A strong Russia and a strong Gazprom are good for Europe.”
Mr. Putin has dragged me, kicking and screaming, to the undeniable conclusion that a strong Russia is only good for Russia. And even that doesn’t seem to be the case half of the time.
A country that arms the major islamic nuts to the South with nukes, while also fighting murderous islamic nuts all over Southern Russia, and then starts flying over the North pole in a cold war redux is not acting rationally.
A barely-disguised theme that runs through this article is that Europe has awakened to a time-honored truism: Russia is not a European nation.
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