The participants of the panel discussion about Central Europe’s energy potential at the Central European Summit, an international conference organised by the Oeconomus Economic Research Foundation and the Center for Fundamental Rights on 15 April, featured Janusz Kowalski, Member of Parliament of the Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party, Natko Vlahović, President of the Croatian New Frontier Foundation, Matt Boyse, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in the US, and Georgi Harizanov, Director of the Bulgarian Institute for Right-Wing Politics. The discussion was moderated by Fanni Lajkó, analyst at the Center for Fundamental Rights.
The European Green Deal: the enemy of common sense
At the beginning of the panel discussion, Janusz Kowalski said that in his view, the European Green Deal is an enemy of sovereignty and common sense; a virus that is destroying his country, Poland and the EU. In fact, the real name of the agreement should be the German agreement, because Germany – and China – are making a lot of money from it. Kowalski sees nothing positive in the agreement, and asked: why can Poland not use its own coal reserves and why does it have to import natural gas instead? Every EU member state should look after its own interests, so Poland should look after Polish and not German or Brussels’ interests.
TurkStream at the service of Central Europe
Georgi Harizanov quoted Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State in the Biden administration in relation to the TurkStream pipeline, saying that the EU should be told from time to time to **** off. With the pipeline, Bulgaria supplies natural gas to its friends and partners in Central Europe. As Harizanov said, Bulgarian politicians realised in time that it was only a matter of time before Russian gas exports to Europe would end, so they agreed to the construction of the TurkStream pipeline, which provides cheap gas from Central Asia and Turkey, as a “preventive measure”. He stressed that the TurkStream provides partners with large quantities of cheap and environmentally friendly gas. These deliveries will continue, regardless of what the EU thinks. Harizanov also noted that he regularly has to correct the critics who criticise Bulgaria for the pipeline, because they do not know that the length of the pipeline on Bulgarian territory is only 16 kilometres. He said that the Bulgarian government before the current one wanted to impose a tax on the gas passing through the pipeline to punish Viktor Orbán, but when they met in person years ago, Harizanov promised the Hungarian prime minister that if Bulgaria had a right-wing government, it would never take punitive action against Hungary – and this has been the case since a new coalition government led by a right-wing party was formed this year.
The potential of the Croatian LNG terminal
In his speech, Natko Vlahović described how Croatia has become an important player in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector. The country has an LNG terminal, which is becoming increasingly important. The port, which is planned to be expanded in the coming years, currently receives 65 per cent American LNG. As Vlahović underlined, regional cooperation and US support are needed for energy supply in the region.
The US is open to nuclear energy cooperation
Matt Boyse said that the first Trump administration put a strong emphasis on nuclear cooperation with the EU. Countries on NATO’s eastern flank were open to cooperation, as many countries wanted to become independent of Russian energy. The Brussels bureaucracy viewed this with some scepticism, and under the less nuclear-focused Biden administration the process slowed down. Boyse said that a few weeks ago US officials in Budapest discussed their willingness to cooperate with the Hungarian state, for example in providing nuclear fuel, if required. There is also a lot of interest in small modular reactors in our region, for example from Romania and Poland, so this technology has huge potential too. Boyse asked: given that nuclear energy is diversifying energy sources, is green and long-term, what’s not to like?
