The European Court of Justice ruled in favor of which sees European reliance on Russian gas as a regional security threat and has diversified its own supplies by buying liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States and others. This was reported byjournalist Rikard Jozwiak on Twitter.
"A big victory for #Poland, #Ukraine, #Lithuania, #Latvia and #Estonia against #Germany & the European Commission today with the European Court of Justice ruling that the #Opal pipeline must comply with the EU's energy rules & that no exemption can be granted #Nordstream1," the message reads.
The lawsuit was part of a long-running dispute over Russian supplies, pitting Germany against Poland and other east European states that once lived in the orbit of the former Soviet Union.
The lawsuit, which was launched in 2011 by Poland after losing some transit volumes and tariff incomes resulting from the opening of Nord Stream 1. They filed the case in 2016 when Gazprom's plans to double gas export capacity to Germany via Nord Stream 2 gained pace. The case was joined by the governments of Lithuania and Latvia.
Nord Stream 2, which has a section running under the Baltic Sea, would bypass pipelines running across Ukraine, which has earned valuable transit fees from the business. Poland, which has said it does not plan to extend a gas supply deal with Gazprom when the existing one expires in 2022, and other eastern European states have been unnerved since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 in its dispute with Ukraine. Germany appealed to the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) after a lower tribunal in 2019 annulled an EU decision to let Gazprom boost supplies via OPAL pipeline. The lower tribunal's annulment also followed a Polish challenge to the decision that was made by the European Commission, the European Union's executive.
In the latest case, the Court of Justice rejected Germany's arguments that "energy solidarity" was a political concept rather than a legal issue, saying the Commission was required to examine possible risks to the security of gas supply to EU markets.
"The legality of any act of the EU institutions falling within the European Union's energy policy must be assessed in the light of the principle of energy solidarity," judges said.
The 470-km (292-mile) Opal pipeline, which links Nord Stream 1 with onshore European gas grids, runs from northern Germany to the Czech Republic and has an annual capacity of 36 billion cubic metres of natural gas.