No EU funding for gas pipeline
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has confirmed her country's opposition to funding the flagship Nabucco gas pipeline project with European money, stressing that the problem is not financing but finding the gas to feed the pipeline
The Nabucco pipeline project aims to decrease the EU's dependence on Russian imports by bringing Caspian gas to a hub in Austria via the Balkans.
Germany has long been suspected of seeking to prevent Nabucco from becoming an EU project. As a net contributor to the EU budget, it would be expected to provide the lion's share of the estimated eight billion euro required to build the pipeline. Moreover, Germany appears to doubt the feasibility of the project should the pipeline fail to link up with Iranian and Iraqi gas fields, a distant prospect due to political uncertainties in each of those countries.
