Gabriel, who served as German Vice-Chancellor from 2013 to 2018 and who has announced his retirement from politics, is expected to make a speech on the first day of the IBC’s 22nd Annual General Meeting in Bonn on May 30, Poland's BiznesAlert.pl website has reported.
The first speaker at Thursday's meeting will be Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller, the Polish website reported.
The annual general meeting is expected to elect the new authorities of the International Business Congress, according to BiznesAlert.pl.
Klaus Schäfer, CEO of Uniper, is expected to resign from his role as vice-president of the IBC, while Rainer Seele, CEO of OMV, may be elected in his place, the Polish website said.
It added that both Uniper and OMV were financial partners in the contested Nord Stream 2 project to build an undersea gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.
The presiding committee of the International Business Congress brings together representatives from companies such as Siemens, GE Russia, Schneider Electric and Total, according to BiznesAlert.pl.
The Polish website described the IBC as an organisation that aims to integrate the Russian and Western energy sectors.
An opinion piece published by the politico.eu news website this month described Germany’s Gabriel as "the prime protégé" of Gerhard Schröder, the country’s former chancellor "who has come to hold both the chairmanship of Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline and Rosneft, Russia’s energy giant.”
According to the writer of the opinion piece—John Vinocur, a former executive editor and vice president of the International Herald Tribune—Gabriel “turned up the volume of Schröder's Putin-loyalty line to full blast” during his time in Angela Merkel’s coalition government and “banged the drum" for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
The controversial 1,200-kilometre pipeline is expected to have the capacity to send around 55 billion cubic metres of Russian natural gas a year directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea, while bypassing the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine.
Warsaw and Washington have both strongly criticised the project amid concerns that the pipeline will make the European Union more dependent on Russian gas.
A US-based security think tank said in an analysis this month that a new US sanctions push could pose an “existential danger” to the disputed new Russia-Germany gas link opposed by Poland.
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Source: BiznesAlert.pl.