The Second Lock

Whatever Washington and Moscow agree about Nord Stream, Russian pipeline gas comes back to the European market only if most of Europe votes for it. The EU ended those imports with a regulation passed by qualified majority, which sits beside sanctions that any one government could let lapse. A restart now needs either a ruling from the Court of Justice or a Commission proposal backed by the European Parliament and a Council majority.

In early October Reuters reported that Jared Kushner and Kirill Dmitriev, Vladimir Putin's investment envoy, had discussed bringing an American investor into the Nord Stream pipelines. The White House said there had been no recent Nord Stream discussions. Two weeks later European officials described renewed gas supplies, along with the release of frozen Russian assets, as incentives Washington's envoys had floated to bring Moscow to a settlement in Ukraine. European governments turned down both. On 28 October the Commission answered in public. Nord Stream stays shut after the war, its spokespeople said, and the phase-out of Russian gas is tied to no sanctions and no geopolitical event.

That last line matters most. Europe holds the pipeline shut with two locks of different strength. The first is the sanctions regime, which since July 2025 has banned any transaction involving either Nord Stream line. Like every EU sanction on Russia it expires unless all 27 governments renew it every six months, so Hungary or Slovakia could end it alone at a renewal. The second is the regulation phasing out Russian gas, published in February. Short-term LNG contracts are already gone. Long-term LNG ends in January and pipeline contracts in September 2027. It passed by qualified majority over the votes of those same two governments.

Undoing it takes a fresh proposal from a Commission that has just said it will not make one, then a majority among member states and the approval of the European Parliament. Hungary has asked the Court of Justice to annul the regulation on the ground that Brussels dressed a sanction as trade policy to escape unanimity, which is the most precise description of the design on record. Slovakia has filed a similar case and asked for the ban to be suspended while it is heard. Neither has produced a ruling, and Hungary's new government may yet drop its case.

The regulation has one built-in escape. The Commission may suspend the ban for up to four weeks when a declared emergency seriously threatens supply in a member state, an instrument sized for a cold snap or a failed interconnector. Of three reviewers who challenged this analysis before publication, one held that this clause, together with the regulation's legal basis, which we have not verified, leaves the question less settled than Brussels claims. Both points stand. Neither offers a road to a restart.

The physical obstacles stack on top of the legal ones. Three of the four Nord Stream strings were wrecked in 2022 and Germany never certified the second line. Washington's side of the bargain looks different. It has already eased sanctions on Russian diesel and is reportedly weighing relief for Russia's sovereign wealth fund, measures it can take alone. An American stake in Nord Stream would buy a pipe into a market closed by statute.

The pressure on Europe's majority is real. The Iran war has kept energy prices high, Germany's AfD has promised to reopen the pipeline and Washington wants a deal it can sell. Three signals would show the lock loosening: a Commission proposal to amend the regulation, an interim order from the Court in Slovakia's case or a government beyond Budapest and Bratislava asking to reopen the text. Until one of them appears, a Nord Stream clause in any US-Russian agreement depends on parties who have not signed it.