BERLIN Just weeks before a crucial German election, the country’s chancellor, ignoring loud protests from Eastern Europe, clinches a landmark accord for a gas pipeline under the Baltic that will strengthen the influence of Russia’s cunning leader over Europe’s energy security.
If that sounds like a description of mid-July 2021, that’s only because in the world of German energy politics, history really does repeat itself.
The above scene played out in early September 2005; German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was on the cusp of losing power to an East German-born physicist named Angela Merkel when he hosted a ceremony with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Berlin to ink a pipeline deal that would come to be known as Nord Stream.