Kamenicky: EU Talks with US Must Never Go against Member States' Interests

Brussels, January 21 (TASR-correspondent) - Future negotiations between the European Commission (EC) and the new US administration must not go against the interests of European Union (EU) member states, Slovak Finance Minister Ladislav Kamenicky (Smer-SD) said on Tuesday in Brussels after meetings of eurozone and EU finance ministers. Kamenicky confirmed that during the two-day talks, the ministers also discussed the start of the new US administration led by Donald Trump. "I talked about the need to follow the individual steps. There are some changes in the pre-election rhetoric, but it's clear that there will be a lot of talk about the purchase of LNG from the United States and about possible tariffs that the US could impose. The European Commission and individual member states will have to react in some way. The United States is one of the EU's biggest trading partners and it is therefore important to be able to set up mutual relationships," he noted. The Slovak finance minister drew the attention of his counterparts in Brussels to the need to prevent the EU from falling into one dependency after another. He pointed to the situation when the EU was importing 40 percent of its gas from Russia before the war in Ukraine and today some member states, which used to buy more than 50 percent of their gas from Russia, are importing around 90 percent of their liquefied gas from America. am/mcs