- Payment via Gazprom Bank: only a “Putinian smoking candle”
- Industry and doctors warn: niche products disappearing from the market
- EU states criticize burden sharing for gas storage facilities
- EU wants to bring solar energy production back to Europe
- DSA: no breakthrough at trilogue
- Vestager wants to streamline competition rules
- Industry and doctors: niche products disappear from the market
- Column: what’s cooking in Brussels?
Russian soil will be off-limits to numerous European parliamentarians, public figures, and journalists in the future. Yesterday, the Russian Foreign Ministry imposed an entry ban on the “top leadership of the EU as well as the vast majority of members of the European Parliament who support an anti-Russian policy”.
As of today, gas bills from Russia must be paid via the Gazprom bank, according to President Vladimir Putin. From a European perspective, however, nothing will really change, at least German Chancellor Olaf Scholz remains calm. Lukas Scheid has analyzed the account structure through which payments will be made in the future and what could be behind Putin’s battle for monetary sovereignty.
The alarm is currently coming from the medical and MedTech sector. The requirements in the new EU Medical Devices Regulation are in some cases so high that it is hardly lucrative for manufacturers of medical devices to continue to keep certain products on the market, let alone to conduct research and development, writes Eugenie Ankowitsch.
The EU Commission’s legislative initiative on strategic gas storage has been criticized. Among other things, member states that need to fill large storage capacities in order to be able to supply countries without their own storage facilities complain about the inadequate sharing of the burden. Read more about this in the news.
New at Europe.Table: Claire Stam writes in the column “What’s cooking in Brussels” about what will be on the European menu in Brussels next week. Cheers!
Lisa-Martina Klein
Feature
Payment via Gazprom Bank: only a “Putinian Smoking Candle”?
Although Christian Lindner (FDP) announced an “examination in detail” of what the Russian payment regime for gas, issued by decree, prescribes, there does not seem to be too much concern. A “Putinian smokescreen to create confusion,” is what Jens Südekum, a member of the advisory board of the German Ministry of Economics, called it. The assessment that Putin’s decree does not significantly change the status quo can also be heard from government circles in Berlin. Gas is therefore likely to continue to flow to Europe.
Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi said he understood it to be an “internal matter for the Russian Federation.” German Gazprom customers were still holding back on Wednesday with reactions as to what the decree meant.
The decree stipulates that Gazprombank will practically act as an intermediary for gas purchases by Western countries. A foreign gas customer will be required to transfer foreign currency to a special so-called K account. Gazprombank is then to buy rubles on behalf of the customer and transfer the Russian currency to another K-account. In a further step, the rubles are then to be transferred to an account of the gas supplier Gazprom. According to the decree, Gazprombank can open such accounts without the presence of a representative of a foreign gas buyer.
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