Baltic States – CIS, Energy, EU – Baltic States, Gas, Legislation

"Simply, the Central and Eastern European countries are concerned. Ukraine is worried that this project would bypass Ukraine and actually close down one of the major transit routes for Russian gas to Europe and that is why we will ask the member states for a mandate to negotiate with Russia on how the EU law would be applied in this project and how to make sure that transits through Ukraine would also continue after 2019," the commissioner said in an interview to the Aktuaalne Kaamera newscast of the public broadcaster ERR.

Sefcovic said that even though the European Commission cannot stop the construction of the pipeline, which is already underway, it is possible to force Russia to follow European Union law in the future use of the gas pipeline.

"I think that it is very important to know that a project like this costs a lot of money and I know that every investor wants to have legal certainty that the pipeline could be operated in accordance with the law, in our case in accordance with the European energy law and therefore we made it very clear that we cannot imagine that such a pipeline could operate on an illegal basis or only according to the Russian law," Sefcovic said.