Germany's Environmental Group Nabu Takes Legal Action Against Nord Stream 2

BERLIN (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 03rd May, 2021) German environmental charity Nabu on Monday filed a lawsuit against construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, arguing that the gas link could damage the Baltic Sea's sensitive marine ecosystem.

"The NABU filed a challenge today against a permit that the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) issued to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline," a press statement read.

The Berlin-based organization invoked alleged procedural errors in how BSH handled objections to the Russian-led project and the German government's climate goals as the reason for filing the lawsuit.

The legal action targets an underwater section of the pipeline that will be built in Germany's exclusive economic zone, which the charity's director Joerg-Andreas Krueger asserts will destroy an area the size of 16 football fields and affect a ten-times-bigger area.

"An even pressing issue is furthermore whether we really need this pipeline. The project is a dinosaur of the fossil infrastructure and, according to the [nonprofit] German Institute for Economic Research, it threatens energy transition," he said.

The state authorities in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the site of Nord Stream's landfall, set up a green foundation in January in a bid to protect the gas project from US sanctions that aim to kill it. The foundation's charter describes gas as a bridge to green transition.