"We hope that it will be completed in 2022, approximately in the middle of the year," Novak told the Rossiya 24 broadcaster.
Last month, Germany’s federal network agency Bundesnetzagentur suspended the certification process of the pipeline until the operator complies with the necessary requirements. According to the EU law, a company that extracts or supplies gas does not have the right to transport it, the so-called ownership unbundling issue. On June 2021, Nord Stream 2 AG applied for certification of the company as an independent transmission operator, but the Bundesnetzagentur's head Jochen Homann said on 16 December that the regulator had yet to receive the necessary documents to continue the certification process
Once the documents are received, the Bundesnetzagentur will have four months to finish the certification process. After the approval, the European Commission will be reviewing the case for two months and can take another two months in the event additional details are required.
On Thursday, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov called on countries not to politicise the certification process. He said that Berlin sees Nord Stream 2 as an exclusively commercial project notwithstanding what other countries believe.