Poland demands Germany stop Nord Stream attack prosecutions on x (opens in a new window)
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Published Oct 12 2025
24
This article is an on-site version of our Europe Express newsletter.
Good morning.
Reinstated French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu unveiled a new cabinet last night, selecting some new faces as he desperately seeks parliamentary approval for a 2026 budget.
Today, our Warsaw correspondent reports on Poland’s call for Germany to drop prosecutions in the Nord Stream attack case, and I unpack a new Bruegel paper analysing Europe’s reliance on US weaponry.
Explosive
A senior Polish security official is calling on Berlin to drop its prosecution of Ukrainians suspected of blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines from Russia to Germany, writes Raphael Minder.
Context: The pipelines were damaged by underwater explosions in 2022, months after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Swedish and Danish investigations closed last year, but German prosecutors issued European arrest warrants for Ukrainian divers who allegedly sailed from Germany to destroy the pipelines.
Last week, the Polish judiciary extended the preliminary detention of a suspect arrested in Poland.
Another Ukrainian was detained in a holiday resort near the Italian city of Rimini in August, and is challenging his extradition to Germany.
Sławomir Cenckiewicz, who leads Poland’s national security bureau and is a key adviser to President Karol Nawrocki, told the Financial Times in an interview that Germany should not continue the prosecutions if it wanted to align Russia policy with Poland and other Nato allies.
“If Germany is prosecuting someone based in Poland who destroyed the source of income of the Russian war machine, then we see a clear contradiction in interests between Poland and Germany, especially when it comes to how we perceive the reality after [Russia’s invasion in] 2022,” Cenckiewicz said.
“From our point of view, this investigation doesn’t make sense, not only in terms of the interests of Poland but also the whole [Nato] alliance,” Cenckiewicz said, adding that prosecuting Nord Stream saboteurs might serve German justice, but also “Russian injustice”.
Russia had halted supplies through Nord Stream 1, its main conduit of gas to Germany, before the blasts, and operations of the parallel pipeline Nord Stream 2 never began.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said recently that it was not in Warsaw’s interest to extradite the suspect held in Poland, since “the problem with Nord Stream 2 is not that it was blown up, the problem is that it was built.”
Cenckiewicz said that while he had no knowledge of Poland helping Ukrainians to attack the pipeline, “the interest of the Polish state is to protect all who potentially took part in damaging Nord Stream 2, which we treat as part of the war machine of Russia.”
Chart du jour: Side hustle
Scores of European parliament members earn income from second jobs in areas that overlap with their lawmaking, according to an FT analysis that raises questions about potential conflicts of interest.
Big brother
Europe’s defence spending surge over the past three years has made the continent even more dependent on US weapons, a new research paper has found, creating a self-perpetuating reliance that erodes Europe’s autonomy.
Context: In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump’s re-election as US president, European Nato members have pledged to raise defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP and rapidly modernise their armed forces.
European purchases of US arms hit a record high of $76bn in 2024, according to a Bruegel paper authored by Juan Mejino-López and Guntram Wolff, who analysed 1,179 notifications under the US Foreign Military Sales programme since 2008.
FMS notifications from 2022 to 2024 made up half of European Nato nations’ spending on military equipment, up from 27.8 per cent from 2019 to 2021.
While there once was the idea that buying American meant America would defend you, now, with Trump’s isolationism and clash with mainstream European political values, that’s not so clear.
Continued reliance on US weapons “creates lock-in effects” that make it harder to choose European alternatives, the authors warn, and provides US arms companies with income to spend on staying ahead of European rivals: a vicious (or virtuous, as seen from Washington) circle.
“Dependence on US weapon deliveries and embedded technology is a growing concern,” they write.
“Even though extreme scenarios, in which intelligence sharing would be discontinued or weapon systems not updated . . . might be unlikely, the mere existence of that possibility provides the US with leverage across multiple policy areas.”
The answers lie in sustainably financed spending plans to ensure demand for European products, support for emerging European defence companies developing cutting-edge weaponry, and forcing the continent’s fragmented national defence players to work together.
“Europe is . . . becoming more, not less, dependent on the US,” the report states.
“Failing to make progress means accepting that Europe cannot remain a free and autonomous continent.”
What to watch today
EU Council President António Costa represents the EU at a Gaza “peace summit” in Egypt.
EU justice ministers meet in Luxembourg.
Informal meeting of EU trade ministers in Horsens, Denmark.
U.S. forced Dutch government to seize Chinese chipmaker – Politico
Nexperia’s parent company has blasted the seizure as excessive interference driven by geopolitical bias
Dutch
authorities took control of the Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia
following significant pressure from Washington, Politico reported on
Tuesday, citing newly released court documents. The Netherlands-based
company was seized earlier this month.
The news comes amid
escalating trade tensions between the US and China, marked by disputes
over tariffs, export controls, and technology transfers.
The
production of semiconductors remains a particularly sensitive area due
to its critical role in global technology and security, as they have
both civilian and military uses.
Officials from the Dutch Foreign
Affairs Ministry and representatives from a US agency responsible for
protecting critical technology reportedly met in June to discuss the
Dutch-based chipmaker, which is owned by the Chinese group Wingtech.
During
the meeting, US officials reportedly emphasized that the company’s CEO,
Wingtech founder Zhang Xuezheng, must be removed in order to avoid US
export controls.
“It is problematic that the CEO of the company is still the same Chinese owner,” the US said, according to the minutes quoted in the documents. “It’s almost certain that the CEO should be replaced to qualify for an exemption on the entity list.”
The Dutch Economic Ministry stated earlier this week that it intervened in Nexperia due to “recent and acute signals of serious governance shortcomings and actions” within the company.
It cited alleged risks to “technological expertise and capabilities in the Netherlands and Europe.”
The authorities invoked never-before-used powers under a Dutch law
known as the Availability of Goods Act. The decision led to a 10% fall
in Wingtech’s shares in Shanghai.
Wingtech condemned the intervention as “an act of excessive interference driven by geopolitical bias, not by fact-based risk assessment,” according to a now-deleted message on WeChat, which was archived and translated by the Chinese political blog Pekingnology.
On
Tuesday, Reuters quoted Nexperia as saying it is currently facing
export restrictions imposed by both US and Chinese authorities and is
negotiating with both sides.
While Washington has not directly
added the company to its Entity List, it has been affected due to its
full ownership by China’s Wingtech, which was listed by the US
Department of Commerce in December 2024.
You can share this story on social media:
Chip war: The Netherlands has taken control of Chinese-owned semiconductor manufacturer Nexperia to ensure enough of its chips stay in Europe.
On the rocks: Russia’s coal industry has become one of the main economic casualties of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale war in Ukraine.
Too French to fail? France will soon test the boundaries of the EU’s fiscal backstop.
Europe needs a new safety mechanism.
Donald Trump has threatened Spain with punitive tariffs because of Spain’s refusal to increase their NATO spending to 5% of GDP.
The Financial Times has also reported that the US could only send Ukraine about 20-50 Tomahawks, as their stocks are low.
Mark Rutte has stated that NATO will be escorting Russian aircraft out of NATO’s airspace, should the Russians breach NATO’s airspace.
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