Foo Yun Chee and Philip Blenkinsop Brussels
THE EU launched a legal attack on Gazprom yesterday, stoking tensions with Moscow as it accused the Russian gas giant of overcharging buyers in eastern Europe and hindering competition.
Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission antitrust chief, said Gazprom was barring EU clients from selling its gas to other states – a particular concern in recent efforts to aid Ukraine – and putting pressure on governments to back its pipeline interests.
State-controlled Gazprom is a vital supplier of energy to Europe despite the EU’s frequent political disputes with Moscow.
The commission’s investigation, opened in September 2012, had initially covered Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Relations with Russia, and Gazprom in particular, have since been poisoned more by the East-West confrontation over Ukraine.
“Gazprom is dominant in all these markets,” Vestager said. “Our preliminary view alleges that Gazprom is abusing this position.
“Gazprom has been able to charge higher prices in some countries without fearing that… gas would flow in from where prices were lower,” she said of contracts with the three former Soviet Baltic states and formerly communist Poland and Bulgaria.
Google charged
Vestager said prices in some countries were as much as 40 percent higher than in others. Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite welcomed the charges, saying: “The era of Kremlin-backed political and economic blackmail draws to a close.”
Noting the investigation had begun before Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, Vestager said that “this case is not political”, but acknowledged some would see political elements in it.
Gazprom responded by calling the charges, to which it has 12 weeks to respond, “unfounded”.
The decision to move against Gazprom comes a week after Vestager charged US giant Google with abusing its market power, following five years of hesitation by her predecessor. – Reuters