An Addendum to the model: material factors and Russian agency

The theoretical framework presented above focuses on ideational factors (identity and the construction of the Other) in order to show that they also matter in defining energy policy. On the other hand, it does not fully account for other, material determinants of energy policy, such as economic profitability or strategic considerations. These factors are significant and are thus discussed along ideational ones in the empirical analysis below. At the same time, the article does attempt to convey the argument that material factors alone cannot explain different national energy policies towards Russia, and that the ideational dimension is a fundamental determinant. In other words, Germany’s decision to support the Nord Stream 2 project was not simply driven by economic interests, but also rested on positive political conceptualisations of energy relations with Russia. By the same token, antagonistic constructions of the Russian Other (and of German-Russian cooperation) are at least as important as strategic or economic considerations in shaping Poland’s opposition to the project.

Furthermore, Russian agency also plays a role in shaping German and Polish ideas and policies, as well as concrete policy outcomes. Launching the Nord Stream 2 project was possible because the Russian side had a political and economic interest and shared a positive ideational conceptualisation of energy cooperation with its German and Western partners. On the other hand, it was aware of Polish political opposition to expanding energy cooperation (Martewicz 2018). While this remains beyond the scope of the article, it is plausible that Russian ideational constructs mirrored Polish ones (that is, they conceptualised Poland as an antagonistic Other; see BBC 2017 for an example of a contemporary dispute concerning identity and historical issues) and were not conducive to seeking further energy cooperation with Warsaw.⁴

Nord Stream 2 and conceptualisations of the Russian Other in Germany

The Nord Stream 2 debate took place against a background of high tensions in EU-Russia relations, which were related primarily to the Ukraine crisis, Russia’s military intervention in Syria and allegations of Russian interference in Western electoral processes and societal debates. As a consequence of these tensions, long-standing identity-based narratives of the Russian Other were reactivated and influenced current political debates in many EU member states (see Siddi 2017b, 137–156). However, this also meant that different national articulations of the Russian Other became relevant and influenced policy debates in different ways from country to country. While the assessment of Russia became more negative throughout the EU, leading to the joint EU decision to impose sanctions on Moscow, there were different views about the nature of Russian policies and especially about how to engage the Kremlin in the future. Nowhere does this become clearer than in the divergent German and Polish approaches to energy relations with Russia. The German and Polish debate on Nord Stream 2 reflected two radically different perceptions of the Russian Other.

At the time when the Nord Stream 2 project was launched, high-ranking German officials such as then Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (2016) argued that the West and Russia “need[ed] each other” to resolve regional conflicts, as negotiations on the Iranian nuclear programme and Syria had shown. Despite tensions and Steinmeier’s own critical assessment of Russian behaviour in the Ukraine crisis, he described Russia as “the EU’s largest neighbour”, arguing that “good neighbourly relations [were] in the interests of both sides”. Significantly, he believed that “after the experiences of the twentieth century, we Germans in particular bear a responsibility to keep finding channels of communication and solutions to conflicts [with Russia]”. This discourse reflected consolidated German narratives about guilt for the Second World War, and particularly for war crimes in Eastern Europe, which had been influential in the framing of Ostpolitik in the 1960s and 1970s (Siddi 2018b). In the post-2014 context, this ideational background induced German policy makers to be wary of radicalising the debate on Russia and seek instead a resolution of the crisis through dialogue, diplomacy and neighbourly cooperation.

One of the prominent articulations of this cooperation concerned trade and energy policy, much like during the Ostpolitik of the 1970s (Lang and Westphal 2017, 27). Steinmeier (2016) argued that

While references to Brandt were mostly the domain of Social Democratic ministers, support of Nord Stream 2 was widely shared across party lines in the government (except for a critical and vocal minority) and even among the opposition. In parliamentary debates, only the Green Party, in opposition, consistently criticised the project. The German media debate on Nord Stream 2 was more critical, but this did not seem to alter the stance of political leaders on the project (Siddi 2020; see also Heinrich 2017, 74–79 for an analysis of media and parliamentary debates on the first Nord Stream project). Most notably, Chancellor Angela Merkel emphasised that Nord Stream 2 was a commercial endeavour and should not be undermined by politics (see for instance German Federal Government 2018a). In fact, behind this apparently neutral stance was significant political support for the project, which emerged more clearly over time, as Nord Stream 2 came under attack from Eastern European member states and particularly the US.

As Polish opposition to Nord Stream 2 became more vocal (see below), Gabriel (2017b) told Polish media that the pipeline was in the broader European interest and conformed to EU market principles: “Gas pipelines do not only transport Russian gas to Germany, but also to Poland, of course […] We ask people to understand that we want to stand by the liberalisation of the gas supply undertaken in Europe years ago”. At the same time, Gabriel and Merkel conceded that Nord Stream 2 would have an impact on gas transit in Ukraine, Poland and other Eastern European countries, and pledged that Germany would support the continuation of this transit (Gabriel 2017b; German Federal Government 2018b).

The German official response to the US was more critical. The US were seen as interfering in European energy politics and having a conflict of interests on the Nord Stream 2 question. In June 2017, the US Congress prepared a draft bill that included possible sanctions against Western companies participating in the Nord Stream 2 project. At the same time, US President Donald Trump and numerous other US politicians argued that the EU should import US liquefied natural gas rather than Russian gas. Soon after the sanctions bill was announced, Gabriel issued a joint statement with Austrian Federal Chancellor Christian Kern which criticised harshly the US stance:

The Polish view on Nord Stream 2 and the Russian Other

The Polish debate on Nord Stream 2 and the Russian Other was radically different from the German debate. The Russian Other was mostly essentialised as a security threat and all its policy initiatives – including energy projects – were seen as having negative security implications. As previously argued, antagonistic Polish narratives of the Russian Other have a long history that predates Moscow’s aggressive policies in Ukraine or Syria, and are grounded in Polish experiences of Tsarist and Soviet domination (Zarycki 2004). In the realm of energy policy, these narratives had already been activated earlier, for instance in relation to the first Nord Stream project (Siddi 2017b, 76–83). In 2006, shortly after the project was announced, then Defence Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called it “a new Molotov-Ribbentrop pact” (cited in Castle 2006), thus comparing it to the 1939 Nazi-Soviet deal to partition Eastern Europe. Following the death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski in April 2010 in a plane crash in Russia, while he was en route to visit the Katyn memorial site, the question of the repatriation of the plane wreck to Poland has been a constant irritant in bilateral relations, and the relevant debate has often strayed off to historical disputes (Davies 2016; Sus 2018, 78, 87).

Moscow’s post-2014 belligerent foreign policy contributed to reviving the most antagonistic Polish identity narratives about Russia. In this regard, Russian agency was compounded by changes in Polish domestic politics, most notably the rise to power of the nationalist and profoundly anti-Russian Law and Justice party. The electoral victory of Law and Justice in the fall of 2015 ended eight years of centre-right government under the leadership of Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform. Law and Justice has a history of antagonising both Russia and Germany in political discourse (Reeves 2010). In 2016, one of its main representatives, then Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, argued that Russia was an existential threat for Europe, one more dangerous than ISIS (cited in Guardian 2016). Hence, as a result of both Russian policies and Polish domestic politics, the Polish-Russian bilateral relationship took the form of a confrontational deadlock (for a full account, see Sus 2018). In the Polish domestic debate, Law and Justice politicians used the image of the antagonistic Russian Other against the political opposition, arguing that the Civic Platform and the Russian leadership had been responsible for the Smolensk plane crash and the death of Lech Kaczynski (Davies 2016).

Against this domestic and international background, the Polish parliamentary and media debates on Nord Stream 2 have been overwhelmingly negative across party lines. The project is seen as politically motivated, as well as a threat to Poland’s energy security and economic and strategic interests (Sus 2018, 85–6). Many of the arguments that had been made against the first Nord Stream project have been reiterated – for instance, the notion that Poland will face political pressure from Russia after the pipeline is built (cf. Heinrich 2017, 65–73). However, as illustrated in the analysis below, the official debate has become more radicalised due to the tenser international context and the fact that Law and Justice is now in power in Warsaw.

When Nord Stream was launched, some Polish politicians still argued that the damage which the pipeline would inflict on Poland was actually limited, and Warsaw could compete with it (also) by promoting alternative routes for Russian gas (such as the Amber pipeline through the Baltic states) (Heinrich 2017, 67–68, 85). In the context of the Nord Stream 2 debate, such moderate considerations are absent: the project is seen as catastrophic for Poland. The Polish government’s position on Nord Stream 2 is well summarised in the op-ed written by Minister for European Affairs Konrad Szymanski for Financial Times in October 2016.

Szymanski’s arguments were reiterated in the public statements of Poland’s top leadership. President Andrzej Duda argued that Nord Stream 2 “has nothing to do with economics” and “is an investment of political nature” (Reuters 2016a). Prime Minister Beata Szydlo argued that the project represented a threat to the energy independence of the whole Central and Eastern Europe (PAP 2017). Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski claimed that the pipeline undermined trust among EU member states, struck “a blow against not only CEE [Central and Eastern Europe]’s security of gas supplies, but also Ukraine’s stability” (2016a); it may also cause “geopolitical destabilisation in Central Europe” (2016b).

In the speeches of Polish leaders, explicit references to history were present next to the analysis of current political and energy relations with Russia. These references reflected long-standing Polish identity narratives which constructed Russia as a conflictual and threatening Other. For instance, in an interview focusing on Poland’s foreign, security and energy policy, Waszczykowski explained his country’s stance by arguing that “Poland has had bad experiences in its history. We want to be cautious. We have a war behind our doors right now. We have an aggressive neighbour that is openly proclaiming the redrawing of the borders of Europe” (cited in Dempsey 2016). Similarly, in his speech on Polish foreign policy tasks in 2017, he argued that “Poland will not accept such a vision [the Russian vision] of the political order in Europe, and will not condone the carving up of our continent into spheres of influence. Never again Munich or Yalta!” (Waszczykowski 2017).

Waszczykowski also used the Nord Stream 2 controversy to criticise Germany and associate the project with unrelated issues. He argued that Chancellor Angela Merkel was “working very hard on Nord Stream 2” (cited in Dempsey 2016) and that the pipeline was a way for Berlin and Brussels to punish Poland for a controversial judicial reform (which, in the view of the European Commission, undermines the rule of law in the country) (Harper 2017). In his address on Polish foreign policy tasks for 2018, Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz (who succeeded to Waszczykowski after a cabinet reshuffle) juxtaposed his criticism of Nord Stream 2 to demands that Germany compensates Poland for the losses the latter suffered during the Second World War (Czaputowicz 2018).⁶ Juxtapositions like this one aimed at mobilising influential Polish identity narratives of the Second World War that constructed Germany as a negative Other and use them in the current political debate.

Polish and German leaders have engaged each other in the attempt to resolve differences concerning the Nord Stream 2 project, but their visions have remained fundamentally different. In a bilateral meeting between Merkel and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in February 2018, Merkel continued to defend Nord Stream 2 as an economic project and an import diversification route, whereas Morawiecki reiterated that it entails political and security risks (BiznesAlert 2018; King 2018).

As the project went ahead, Polish leaders further radicalised their rhetoric. President Andrzej Duda called Nord Stream 2 “a weapon in the hybrid war being conducted against Ukraine” (cited in Radio Poland 2018). Similarly, Morawiecki stated that the pipeline is a weapon of hybrid warfare that Moscow wants to use to undermine European energy security and EU and NATO solidarity, “a poison pill for European security” (cited in RFE/RL 2018). Thus, from a Polish perspective, the project continued to be a malign activity engineered by the threatening Russian Other for geopolitical purposes. In the discourse of Polish leaders, the only possible responses to Nord Stream 2 were efforts to block it at the European level, or counter it with alternative projects without Russian participation, such as the Baltic Pipe (see Waszczykowski 2017) and LNG deliveries from the United States (Czaputowicz 2018).⁷ In stark contradiction with Germany’s position, the Polish stance epitomised the conflictual dimension of the EU-Russia conflict/cooperation dichotomy in energy policy.

Including material factors in the analysis

The investigation of the German and Polish stance on Nord Stream 2 would be incomplete without an analysis of material factors, particularly economic and strategic ones. While ideas and a greater predisposition to cooperate with Russia on energy policy played a role in Germany’s positive stance on Nord Stream 2, so did the material gains expected from the project. Together with the already operational Nord Stream pipelines, Nord Stream 2 would allow Germany to become the main hub for Russian gas in Europe. The pipelines create a direct link between Gazprom’s gas fields and German consumers, without any transit-related risks and tariffs. From an economic perspective, this is understandable because Germany is the largest importer of Russian gas in Europe, and gas is expected to acquire a more important role in the German energy mix due to the phase-out of nuclear power plants and the need to curb coal consumption.

In addition to satisfying its own gas demand, however, Germany will probably also be in the position of managing substantial flows of Russian gas towards Western, Southern and Central Europe (cf. Loskot-Strachota and Poplawski 2016). This can be inferred from the fact that the combined capacity of the Nord Stream pipelines (110 bcm/y) exceeds German gas consumption of Russian gas (which was 53.4 bcm/y in 2017⁸). Potentially, this also means that countries further down the pipes may have to pay slightly higher prices for gas than Berlin due to the additional transport costs. This has caused some concern in states that are industrial competitors of Germany, such as Italy (Reuters 2016b).

By the same token, material factors also play some role in Poland’s opposition to Nord Stream 2. If the project is completed, the transit pipelines channelling Russian gas across Polish territory (Yamal-Europe) could lose economic and strategic relevance – although the main impact will be on Ukrainian transit pipelines, which have a much larger capacity. This would also endanger Polish revenue from transit fees, which however is very modest, around $5.5 million a year (cf. Reuters 2017a). The Polish authorities also fear that, by making large volumes of cheap Russian gas available on the Polish market, Nord Stream 2 would prevent competition and the diversification of Poland’s gas imports. In fact, this argument seems to combine economic and political factors. From an economic perspective, regardless of current prices, a more diversified portfolio of suppliers prevents the emergence of a monopolist, and thus reduces the risk of higher prices in the future. At the same time, Poland’s diversification away from Russian gas imports is at least partly motivated by politics, particularly at a time when gas from Russia tends to be cheaper than the alternatives envisaged by the Polish government (such as US LNG).

Warsaw’s strategic arguments are grounded on the following logic. By redirecting volumes of gas away from Ukraine, Nord Stream 2 would weaken Kiev’s strategic position vis-à-vis Russia and the EU (which will reduce reliance on Ukrainian transit pipelines) and decrease its income from transit fees (Loskot-Strachota 2015). The overall impact may therefore be the economic and strategic weakening of Ukraine, which Poland sees as an important geopolitical partner curbing Russian influence. However, this conceptualisation of Ukraine as an anti-Russian buffer is also grounded in long-standing Polish ideational constructs and historical narratives (Fomina 2016, 107). Similarly, Polish perceptions of Russian-German commercial deals as a threat are not simply due to possible negative economic consequences for Poland; they are also linked to negative ideational constructs of German-Russian cooperation, which are deeply entrenched in Polish identity (cf. Reeves 2010, 527–8). Thus, both the economic and the strategic factors guiding Poland’s stance appear to be intertwined with ideational constructs.

Hence, it is difficult to argue that material factors were the main determinant of Poland’s opposition to Nord Stream 2. Had Warsaw been guided by economic logic, it would have attempted to compete with Nord Stream 2 by securing its own supplies of cheap Russian gas, for instance through the expansion of the Yamal pipeline. In the current Polish political discourse, however, this course of action appears unthinkable because the pervasive, negative constructions of the Russian Other make further energy cooperation with Moscow highly undesirable.

The stances of other EU member states: a brief overview

While an in-depth assessment of the stances and discourses of other EU member states involved in the Nord Stream 2 debate is beyond the scope of this article, there is room to present an overview of the main positions and of how they related to the German and Polish approaches. As briefly mentioned earlier, Austria’s stance on Nord Stream 2 was similar to that of Germany. While Austria does not have an Ostpolitik tradition with Russia as influential as that of Germany, it does have a long history of energy trade with Moscow and a national identity that is largely based on its neutral post-Second World War constitution (Kovacs and Wodak 2003). Together with its economic interests in the project, this arguably motivated the Austrian negative reaction to US extraterritorial sanctions targeting Nord Stream 2 (cited above), which could be seen as an attempt to force upon the country a choice between good relations with either Russia or the US.

Other EU member states that had a tradition of cooperative commercial relations and energy trade with Russia took a similar stance to that of Austria and Germany and criticised the US extraterritorial sanctions (Reuters 2017b). As French and Dutch companies are involved in Nord Stream 2, their interests are a factor affecting the stance of France and the Netherlands. The French and Dutch governments refrained from commenting on Nord Stream 2 and let Germany take the lead in its defence. Moreover, like Germany, France has a tradition of seeing economic cooperation with Russia positively, and the Macron government has not departed from it (Deutsche Welle 2018; cf. Cadier 2018). Italy expressed a critical perspective on Nord Stream 2 due to the fact that it concentrates EU-Russia gas trade along a northern route, as opposed to a southern one reaching Italian territory. However, Rome disapproved of the US sanctions because energy trade has been a cornerstone of Italian-Russian relations (Italy is the second largest importer of Russian gas after Germany) and Italian companies were involved in other projects that might be affected too (Bongiorni 2017; Siddi 2018c).

The United Kingdom (UK) kept a low profile towards Nord Stream 2. The new crisis in bilateral relations with Russia following the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal on British soil led some UK politicians, such as then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, to support a more critical stance towards the project (Wintour 2018). Nevertheless, Prime Minister Theresa May refrained from overtly criticising Nord Stream 2 (Sengupta 2018). As the potential consequences of the project are likely to be mostly positive for the UK (due to additional gas reaching the North-Western European markets, see Goldthau 2016, 30–31), no strong opposition to it has arisen in the domestic private sector. Thus, the UK could be seen as a discursive arena where perceptions of the Russian Other are predominantly negative (cf. Nitoiu 2018), but they are not pervasive in national identity and the political debate. This enables economic considerations on themes such as Nord Stream 2 to play an important role in the national debate, alongside negative identity-driven or political arguments.

Nordic members of the EU (Sweden, Finland and Denmark) are not directly affected by Nord Stream 2, if one excepts their decision on granting permission to build the pipeline in their Exclusive Economic Zones or, in the case of Denmark, in its territorial waters. While their national debates on Russia and Nord Stream 2 have become more securitised following the Ukraine crisis, environmental and legal considerations – rather than identity-driven narratives – are the key factor in the Finnish and Swedish stance. They also face the pressure of maintaining positive relations with Germany and Russia, which are key commercial and security actors in their neighbourhood. Finland also maintains a close energy relationship with Russia, including the recent decision to have Russian company Rosatom build a new nuclear plant on Finnish soil (Aalto et al. 2017). Denmark has recently passed a law that would enable it to deny permission to construct the pipeline on its territory for security reasons (Reuters 2018). However, it is unlikely that it will stop the project (for further analysis, see Gotkowska and Szymanski 2016).

The position of several Eastern European member states tends to be far more critical, if not overtly hostile to Nord Stream 2 (cf. Lang and Westphal 2017, 29–34). Apart from Poland, five more of them (the Baltic States, Romania and Slovakia) have consistently argued against the project. The position of the Baltic States is very similar to that of Poland, both in terms of official stance and of likely underlying factors. As the Nord Stream project does not divert gas transit away from their territory (and thus transit revenues), their stance is mostly due to the same strategic and political considerations as Poland’s, and is similarly influenced by pervasive negative constructions of the Russian Other (for an extensive discussion, see Berg and Ehin 2009).

While Russia, and particularly its Soviet past, has been conceptualised negatively also in the national identities of other Eastern European countries, antagonising constructions of the Russian Other do not appear as dominant as in Poland or the Baltic States, particularly in current political discourse. Hence, while negative perceptions of Russia are influential also in these countries, their national debates tend to be influenced more by contextual and material factors. In the case of Slovakia, economic considerations appear to be the main reasons for its opposition to Nord Stream 2. Slovakia plays a key role in the transit of gas that reaches the EU via Ukraine and earned over €350 million annually in transit revenues in recent years. It thus stands to lose if gas flows are redirected to the Nord Stream 2 route. Romania is an important transit country for Russian gas supplies to the Balkans, and would most likely lose this function if Ukrainian transit pipelines are no longer used (Lang and Westphal 2017, 28–30; Loskot-Strachota and Poplawski 2016).

On the other hand, some other Eastern European countries have been ambivalent towards Nord Stream 2. This is the case of Bulgaria, whose population has closer cultural and linguistic ties with Russia than other regional actors, and thus a less critical conceptualisation of the Russian Other. Material factors also play a role: Sofia maintains an interest in a new Southern route for Russian gas imports, and is thus wary of undermining its relations with Russia and Gazprom (Lang and Westphal 2017, 34; Smilov and Andreev 2018). Perspectives on Russia tend to be complex, and by far not as one-sided as in Poland and the Baltics, also in the Czech Republic and Hungary. Material factors are likely to be significant in both cases. With Nord Stream 2 operational, the Czech Republic could acquire greater importance as a transit country in Central Europe and also strengthen its energy security (Groszkowski 2017). After initially voicing a critical stance, Hungary has taken a more supportive approach to Nord Stream 2. Due also to the positive relationship between President Viktor Orban and Putin, Budapest is cooperating with Russia in strategic energy projects in the nuclear field and appears interested in further cooperation with Gazprom with regard to gas trade and infrastructural projects (Aalto et al. 2017; Hejj 2018; Lang and Westphal 2017, 33).