Nord Stream: Brussels shuts the door on Washington and Moscow, now Europe must pay for its independence fairly

On the very day European gas returned to its 2022 crisis price, the European Commission closed a door that Washington and Moscow were trying to push open. Nord Stream will not reopen after the war, Brussels said this Wednesday, 28 October, as reported by Euronews.

The facts

Asked about the plans attributed to the United States and Russia, the Commission's chief spokesperson, Paula Pinho, recalled that the Union knows, in her words, "the hidden costs of being dependent on Russia". She added, again according to Euronews, that Moscow had turned energy into a weapon and that Europeans had paid the price. The energy spokesperson, Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, stated that the exit from Russian gas was tied neither to sanctions nor to any geopolitical event: it will happen whatever happens.

This exit rests on a piece of European law, Regulation (EU) 2026/261, adopted on 26 January 2026 and published on EUR-Lex. According to AFP, it bans Russian liquefied natural gas under long-term contracts from 1 January 2027 and Russian pipeline gas from 30 September 2027, at the latest by 1 November 2027. The choice of a regulation adopted by qualified majority, rather than sanctions voted unanimously, was meant to avoid a veto from Hungary and Slovakia, AFP recalled at the time of the December 2025 agreement. Reversing this law would require a new Commission proposal and a qualified majority of member states, Euronews points out.

This call to order targets a specific project. On 8 October, Reuters, citing five sources, reported that US envoy Jared Kushner and Kirill Dmitriev, an adviser to Vladimir Putin, had reportedly discussed bringing a US investor into Nord Stream. The White House denied any recent discussion on the subject, according to the same agency. The context is tense: according to Reuters, the benchmark TTF contract hit 100 euros per megawatt hour this Wednesday, a first since December 2022, driven by disruptions from the Middle East and European stocks at their lowest.

The positions at stake

Supporters of a reopening do not lack arguments, and they deserve a hearing. For households and manufacturers, Russian gas delivered by pipeline would be cheaper than American LNG, which the Union paid dearly for to replace lost volumes, as Euronews notes. In Germany, the leader of the AfD, Alice Weidel, defends this return in the name of consumers' purchasing power and business competitiveness. In Washington, the idea is part of an openly stated strategy: offering Moscow economic prospects to bring it to the negotiating table. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent even accused Europeans of "hypocrisy", AFP noted on 12 October, since they still buy Russian energy.

The accusation is not unfounded. According to Eurostat data cited by AFP, Russia still supplied 17.3% of the Union's LNG imports in the second quarter of 2026. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak claims, in an unverified figure, 21.3 billion dollars of European purchases of Russian hydrocarbons over the first nine months of the year.

On the other side, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz accuses the AfD of siding with Moscow and sees lasting security of supply only in renewables. Berlin has stated, according to Reuters, that authorisation for a restart was neither granted nor desired.

The analysis

On the substance, Brussels is right, and for reasons Gaullism would readily recognise: you do not entrust your heating to a power that bombs its neighbour's power plants. Reopening Nord Stream while Russia is waging war in Ukraine would amount to financing the aggressor and handing Moscow back the lever it used in 2022. That this project should, moreover, be negotiated between Washington and the Kremlin, over the heads of Europeans and with an American financial interest at stake, makes it even more unacceptable. Energy sovereignty cannot be delegated, neither to Moscow nor to Washington.

But firmness is not enough. First, it will only be credible if Europe really stops buying Russian LNG by the end of the year, otherwise the charge of hypocrisy will remain hard to dismiss. Second, gas at 100 euros is not an abstraction: it weighs on the bills of low-income households, on hospitals, schools and local authorities, on industries that heat or process. A policy that demands efforts in the name of collective security must share them fairly, or it will feed the rhetoric of those who promise Russian gas as a remedy.

For France, the stakes are twofold. The country can rely on its nuclear fleet and its LNG terminals, but it remains exposed to European market prices. And a French entity is, according to Reuters, among the minority shareholders of the company that controls the pipelines, alongside Gazprom, which holds a 51% majority.

Conclusion

Saying no to Nord Stream is necessary. It remains to say yes to something else: joint gas purchases to carry weight with suppliers, a price shield targeted at the most vulnerable households rather than across-the-board aid, and faster progress on energy savings and renewables financed at European level. The question is now put to the Twenty-Seven, and to Paris first of all: will Europe have the courage to pay the price of its independence itself, rather than leaving the bill to those with the least?

Article written with the help of artificial intelligence.