U.K. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Tuesday he agrees with U.S. President Donald Trump’s criticism of Germany for supporting the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
“[Trump] points out that there is a contradiction between asking America to spend more as proportion of its GDP on defense and contributing to NATO and, at the same time, doing an economic deal with Russia that is going to mean Russia is richer and more able to sped money on weapons that could potentially be used in an offensive way,” Hunt told BBC radio this morning.
He added: “We have made it very clear that we are very concerned about the Nord Stream 2 project for precisely the reasons that President Trump says … as an ally of Germany we have expressed those concerns in private, but they know those are our views and we are quite open about it.”
Trump surprised his fellow NATO leaders at a summit in July when he lashed out at the contentious Gazprom-led project, accusing Germany of being “totally controlled by Russia.”
Nord Stream 2 is meant to carry 55 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea when it is completed in 2019, doubling the capacity of the existing Nord Stream pipeline.
The pipeline has caused deep divisions with the EU, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed their commitment to the project at their joint meeting last week.