FT: The EU may give participating countries the right to block gas imports from Russia

Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to Business FM on the possible adoption of a law in the EU allowing individual European countries to impose restrictions or bans on Russian gas supplies.

Obviously, first of all, the bill was invented for the situation with Gazprom, Alexey Belogoryev says:

"The fact that the first and perhaps the only reason is just a legal loophole for energy companies that have long—term contracts with Gazprom and Gazprom Export to painlessly terminate them. Gazprom itself practically does not comment on the issue, as do these companies, but, apparently, the contracts continue to operate. In any case, it was not reported that they were being torn up, canceled, that is, they stopped being executed. Most likely, both sides, that is, Gazprom and its counterparties in Europe, are counting on further legal proceedings, where each of them will insist on force majeure, as it already happened in the proceedings, for example, with a Finnish company last year, and it worked, again, for both sides. It is quite natural that the EU and the European Commission want to somehow insure European companies by giving them a tool that will definitely work."