The way Russia has taken and announced its decision to abandon South Stream once again highlights the importance of diversification of gas supply sources for Bulgaria, a senior EU Commission member said on Tuesday.

According to Kristalina Georgieva, European Commission Vice-President and Budget Commissioner, Moscow has been aware that the EU executive has always insisted that new pipelines were built in compliance with EU law.

This “didn’t change yesterday”, so Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to drop the project  can’t have its grounds in any switch in the Commission’s position on the issue, Georgieva told Bulgaria’s BNR radio station.

To a certain extent, she said, the decision looks like blaming others for someone’s own faults.

Referring to Putin’s suggestion that Bulgaria should seek compensation from the Commission for the loss of potential revenue from transiting Russian gas to Europe via South Stream, Georgieva said that the EU executive body would study the potential consequences of Moscow’s decision to abandon the project and available options for accelerating the creation of a single energy network linking EU member states.

The EU will remain Bulgaria’s biggest source of investment, Georgieva said in response to Putin’s allegation that Bulgaria was “deprived of the possibility of behaving like a sovereign state”, bowing to pressure from the European Commission to block the project.

“Bulgaria is a sovereign country, it is deciding for itself what is best for its citizens. The decision to demand that other suppliers were granted access to the pipeline is in Bulgaria’s interests,” the EU Commission Vice-President said.

“That decision had been taken just because the greater the dependence of any country, not only Bulgaria, on a single supplier, the more difficult it is to negotiate and achieve terms that defend citizens’ interests in the best way.”

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