A senior member of Germany's Free Democrats, Wolfgang Kubicki, came under fire on Friday for suggesting that the country should open the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to northern Germany.
"We should hasten to open Nord Stream 2 in order to to fill up our gas tanks for the winter," Kubicki told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland media group. There was "no sensible reason" not to do so, he added.
Kubicki, deputy leader of the FDP and a vice president of the German parliament, rejected the interviewer's objection that the move would be regarded as a triumph for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Arguing that securing a stable gas supply should be the government's priority, he said that "if the gas storage units are full, we can close Nord Stream 2 again - and the other pipelines as well, when we become independent [of Russian gas]. But we aren't there yet."
The comments were met with criticism, including from Kubicki's own party, which is a junior coalition partner in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government.
Party leader Christian Dürr told dpa that "we are conducting intense discussions on how to avoid a looming energy crisis this winter. As a party, we have made a number of proposals on this matter. Opening Nord Stream 2 is not one of them."
He also said that opening the pipeline, which had been due for certification days before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, would send "the wrong signal to our European partners."
Instead, Dürr called for Germany's three remaining nuclear plants to continue operating for the time being, in order to ease the strain on the energy market. The reactors are due to shut down at the end of the year, as part of Germany's exit from nuclear energy.
The FDP's youth organization also criticized Kubicki's comments.
The proposal was characterized by the "same naivety towards Russia that got us into this precarious situation of energy dependence on Russia," said FDP youth leader Franziska Brandmann.
