German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze responded to the Greens’ reproaches that Germany had offered the US an agreement on Nord Stream 2. According to her, there is no talk of “any dirty deals”. The portal Finanzen.at reported this.
In the fall of 2020, it became known that the head of the German Ministry of Finance, Olaf Scholz, had sent a letter to US Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin at that time. In it, he offered Washington an option to lift sanctions against the gas pipeline in exchange for billions of dollars in investments. On the eve of the environmental organization Deutsche Umwelthilfe published a copy of the letter.
It follows from it that the message was sent in August 2020. It says that Berlin is ready to significantly increase public support for the construction in Germany of two terminals for receiving American liquefied natural gas (LNG) and allocate a billion euros for this. In return, the United States should block or abandon a bill that allows for the introduction of sanctions against Nord Stream 2. Deutsche Umwelthilfe called such a proposal a “dirty deal” at the expense of German taxpayers. The organization said that the construction of Nord Stream 2 is harmful to the environment and the climate.
As it became known on February 10, Olaf Scholz was urgently summoned to the Bundestag for a hearing on Nord Stream 2 at the insistence of representatives of the Green party. At that moment, the head of the German Ministry of Finance, together with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, participated in a government meeting on the topic of coronavirus.