Hopes for More Than Energy From New Pipeline

Joschka Fischer, the former student radical, Green Party leader, German foreign minister and Princeton professor, is convinced that energy shortages last January — caused by a pricing dispute between Russia and Ukraine over natural gas — were the turning point for the pipeline, which is called Nabucco and stretches for 3,000 kilometers, or 1,865 miles. Europe cannot wait for another crisis to begin to diversify its suppliers, he argues, as another cold wave grips the Continent.

Beyond the imperative of supplying energy, however, Mr. Fischer sees immense strategic implications in Nabucco for the European U-nion, and especially its relations with Turkey — a NATO member and candidate to join the E.U. — as well as its eastern neighbors Azerbaijan and Iraq, from where Nabucco hopes to buy its gas.
“Nabucco is about a new relationship,” Mr. Fischer said during a lengthy interview at his Berlin office. “That is why Turkey is so important. Brussels understands this. I wish the member states did too.”

Ever since the Nabucco project was first proposed in 2002, it has been plagued by problems, with divisions inside the E.U. over its cost and even its necessity.

The European U-nion has sought to build stronger economic, trade and political ties with the countries of Central Asia and North Africa — without promising them any prospect of E.U. membership — in a bid to promote stability and economic development.

Mr. Fischer sees Nabucco as an important part of that effort.

Through Nabucco “relationships between Turkey and Europe could have a chance of really improving,” said Mr. Fischer, who — unlike Mrs. Merkel’s conservative bloc — is an ardent supporter of Turkey’s eventually joining the E.U.

New York Times