"The power centers are shifting, the US is still a strong state, but they are moving away from international politics. China is filling this political vacuum," Kurz said.
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The EU, according to Sebastian Kurz, plays an increasingly smaller role, as after a few wrong decisions, the European community has been involved in internal conflicts "between the North and the South, the East and the West."
For small states the chancellor had a comforting message in store. He stated that these trends mark the beginning of changes in the geopolitical situation in the world, in which "large states no longer absorb the small ones. Now fast states swallow those too slow to act," he added.
Nord Stream 2
Austria views the Nord Stream 2 in a very positive way, though it does not mean that it is not necessary to take into account the objections of other EU partners, said Kurz, adding that "the EU needs a more close level of cooperation."
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In November 2017, the European Commission proposed to amend the EU gas directive in order to ensure that rules of the EU energy legislation, including third-party access, tariffs, partial ownership and transparency, extend to offshore portions of import pipelines, which would concern the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
The Nord Stream 2 project involves the construction of two strings of a gas pipeline with a total capacity of 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea.