“The only alternative for a sovereign Slovakia is renewal of transit or demanding compensation mechanisms that will replace the loss in public finances of nearly 500 million euros.”

Well, on the up side, it sounds like all he’s angling for here is money, basically demanding that someone else subsidize gas at Russian rates.

I’m skeptical that he’s going to get it – I mean, Germany and a bunch of other countries had to pay more for gas. But at least it puts a ceiling on what he’s going for.

When did Slovakia sign that thing?

kagis

Hmm. According to Gazprom, 2008.

https://gazpromexport.ru/en/partners/slovakia/

Gas is supplied to the Slovak Republic on the basis of the Framework Agreement signed in 2008 and effective to 2032.

So I suppose that one could make a fair argument that the time window was long enough that a situation like the present one couldn’t have reasonably been foreseen. Like, okay, Slovakia obviously knew that they were granting Russia some measure of leverage over them, but I suppose that in 2008, one could maybe argue that there were warmer hopes as to the future relationship.

considers

I guess that that’s something of a political question for the EU. I do think that if the EU decides to take an active role in energy policy, subsidizes some or all of that, that Brussels should also be able to take broader action to obtain a reliable source of natural gas, because the norm shouldn’t just be to buy member states out of whatever deals they’ve signed up for – that creates moral hazard. Like, there should probably be conditions attached to avoid situations like this in the future. Maybe broader changes could also happen – like, France should stop with their ban on new natural gas drilling and ban on hydrofracking and let the pipelines from Iberia to the rest of the EU be linked up through France, stuff like that.