Baku – APA-Economics. There are no legal grounds to compensate Bulgaria following Russia's announcement the South Stream gas pipeline will not go ahead, a European Commission spokeswoman said on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
"There is legally speaking no basis for compensation," the spokeswoman, Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, told reporters.
The European Commission says it is not in principle opposed to South Stream, Russia's plan for bypassing transit nation Ukraine and shipping Russian gas direct to the EU, but that it had to comply with EU regulations.
In announcing the end of South Stream, Russia blamed EU regulations and said Bulgaria, which is heavily dependent on Russian gas, was being denied its sovereign rights.