by Our Foreign Desk

EUROPEAN Union competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager opened an anti-trust case against Russian state energy firm Gazprom yesterday, charging it with abusing its dominant market position.

Ms Vestager accused Gazprom of bullying by setting unfair pricing and contract restrictions in countries where it sometimes almost fully controls the gas market.

She said that Gazprom sales policies throughout most of the eastern EU were under investigation.

The probe will determine whether the company is preventing cross-border flows of gas to other EU nations, charging unfairly high prices and demanding to keep control of pipelines in return for gas.

“It all ends up in one — abuse of dominant position,” Ms Vestager declared.

But Gazprom dismissed the accusations as “unfounded,” insisting that it “strictly adheres to all the norms of the international law and legislation in the countries where Gazprom operates.”

The commissioner maintained that politics had played no role in her decision to go after the Kremlin-backed company.

However, her initiative dovetails with EU-inspired economic and political sanctions being imposed on Russia for supposed involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite tweeted: “Finally @EU_Commission took on #Gazprom,” adding that there is “no future for #Kremlin political & energy blackmail.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday that all current Gazprom EU contracts had been “signed in strict compliance with the legal regime that was in force in the EU at the time.”

The crisis in Ukraine has forced the 28-nation bloc into a sudden rethink of its energy policies to make it less reliant on Russia and Gazprom.

Europe imports 40 per cent of its gas from Russia, half of which runs through pipelines that cross Ukraine.

The Kremlin has been accused of using its dominance in gas supplies for political gain in Europe, never more so than when it stopped gas deliveries to and through Ukraine twice over the past decade.

However, these interruptions were in response to Kiev refusing to pay bills and diverting supplies intended for other EU states.

The EU said that Gazprom could enforce a divide-and-rule policy to give it excessive power by hindering gas trade among eight nations on the EU’s eastern rim.