The gas war between Russia and Ukraine has underscored the vulnerability of central European nations as they struggle to secure a place in the EU while remaining dependent on Russia for energy supplies.
Indeed, most of the central European states that signed up to the EU in May 2004 are substantially more dependent on Russia for their gas deliveries than Ukraine.
While Russia covers about 40 percent of Ukraine's gas needs, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Slovakia receive practically all their natural gas supplies from Russia.
About 80 percent of gas supplies for the Czech Republic and Hungary come from Russia, which also meets 62 percent of Slovenia's gas needs. This compares to about 24 percent on average for the EU.
The New Year's Day decision by Russia's state energy giant Gazprom to turn off the tap supplying gas to Ukraine has triggered a new debate in Europe about energy.
However, Austria, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, is reliant on Russia for about 60 percent of its gas imports.
As a result, the row between Ukraine and Russia is likely to help move energy up the list of items on Vienna's agenda during the coming six months of its presidency.
Hungary, for one, has called on the EU to help resolve the conflict between Kiev and Gazprom, the world's biggest gas producer.
With signs that Moscow and Kiev might return to the negotiating table, the European Commission on Tuesday called on the two nations to resolve the row.
"The best solution would be when the parties themselves can find a solution to the conflict," commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberger said in Brussels.
But Austrian Economics Minister Martin Bartenstein on Tuesday rejected the notion of the EU taking on a mediating role in the conflict, saying a bilateral solution had to be found.
That said, there have already been calls for European nations to rethink any plans for stepping back from nuclear energy with the conflict between Moscow and Kiev raising worries about the disruption of gas supplies.
This, in turn, has helped contribute to a sharp rise in oil prices on global energy markets.
At the heart of battle between Ukraine and Russia is the move by Moscow to end Soviet-era-subsidized gas prices for Western-oriented Kiev and to increase the price of gas supplies there more than four times.
At the same time, the gas war has also raised concerns in Bulgaria and Romania, which are expected to become the EU's 26th and 27th members within a year.
This was underscored by a report in Bulgaria's Dnewnik daily, saying that Moscow also planned to more than double the price of gas supplied to Sofia. Bulgaria draws 97 percent of its gas supplies from Russia.
Dnewnik reported on Tuesday that as part of energy talks between Moscow and Sofia, Gazprom wants to hike the price from US$120 per 1000m3 to US$260 per 1000m3.
Romania, which receives about 40 percent of its gas supplies from Russia, in November negotiated with Moscow a modest increase in the price of gas deliveries from US$252 to US$285.
Apart from concerns about Russia attempting to use its vast energy supplies as a political weapon, the Gazprom move against Ukraine also serves to highlight Moscow's ambitions to promote itself as a global energy power.
This is particularly the case after it took over the chairmanship of the Group of Eight of leading industrial nations on New Year's Day.
Tensions between western Europe and several of the new EU states have been building for several months since Germany signed a new gas pipeline deal with Russia that would bypass parts of central Europe.
Russia acts as one of the most important energy suppliers to Germany, Europe's biggest economy. Germany receives about 36 percent of its gas supply from the Russians.
However, other nations comprising so-called old Europe are even less dependent on Russia. In the case of France, about 25 percent of its supplies are from Russia.
Malta and Cyprus -- which joined the EU along with most of the central European states in May 2004 -- are at the lower end of the dependency scale, along with Ireland, the Netherlands and Britain.
Britain essentially supplies all its own needs and is likely to become a net importer for the first time this year.
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS