BERLIN, February 5. /TASS/. Dialogue with Russia should not be interrupted over current differences, including over blogger Alexey Navalny’s case, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday at a video call with French President Emmanuel Macron after a virtual meeting of the Franco-German Defense and Security Council.
"Despite all the differences, it is strategically imperative to maintain dialogue with Russia on many geostrategic issues," she said recalling that cooperation was required to find solutions, including in Ukraine and Libya.
Merkel spoke amid tensions with Russia over the situation involving Alexey Navalny and the expulsion of three diplomats from Russia.
Earlier on Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the Swedish, Polish and German diplomats who participated in unauthorized demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg on January 23 had been declared personae non gratae. Swedish, Polish and German embassy officials were summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry, where a protest was expressed to them.
The Foreign Ministry said there was evidence confirming that staffers of the Swedish and Polish general consulates in St. Petersburg and a German embassy staffer in Moscow had participated in unauthorized demonstrations.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Moscow would react to each case of foreign diplomats’ intervention in Russia’s internal affairs in connection with the situation involving blogger Alexey Navalny.
In connection with the German diplomat’s expulsion, the Russian ambassador to Germany was summoned to Germany’s Federal Foreign Office.
Nord Stream 2 issue
The issue of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project is a source of differences between the European Union and the United States, but the sides can find a mutually acceptable solution, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters on Friday.
"As far as [US President Joe] Biden’s administration is concerned, we will naturally launch a dialogue with them," she said at an online press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron following an online meeting of the two states’ joint council on defense and security.
Once again, she spoke negatively about Washington’s extraterritorial sanctions imposed on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and targeting companies engaged in the project. At the same time, she added that "disagreements [with the United States on the issue] are probably not as huge as they seem."
"Clearly, this is a controversial project with is being discussed in Europe," she said, adding that "a decision can be found jointly" on the basis of a certain framework.
In her words, Nord Stream 2 is a business project, which also has political significance and "plays an important role in the trans-Atlantic region."
The basic requirement of the European Union’s Third Energy Package is the so-called unbundling, or the separation of energy supply and generation from the operation of transmission networks.
In 2019, the EU updated its Gas Directive to make Third Energy Package rules applicable to pipelines laid in the European Union’s maritime economic zone.
On May 15, 2020, the Federal Network Agency of Germany refused to exempt Nord Stream 2 from the rules of the updated EU Gas Directive. The agency noted that the necessary condition for removing the pipeline from the rules of the updated Gas Directive was the project’s implementation before May 23, 2019.