Vertical Corridor: Europe’s best energy exit plan

When the Ukrainian transit route closed in early 2025, TurkStream became Europe’s sole pipeline route. The molecules remained Russian. The invoice turned Turkish. Brussels calls it diversification. It is leverage.

Europe’s problem is not supply but control, not whether energy arrives but who commands the chokepoint.

Ankara sits at the valve, blending and reallocating gas branded as a hub.

EastMed and the Vertical Corridor are not parallel projects but a sovereign axis.

Mediterranean supply anchored in Europe. Northbound distribution under EU jurisdiction. Engineers separate systems. Strategy does not. Separate them, and dependence endures.

The EastMed pipeline was designed as a sovereignty instrument. It connected Israeli and Cypriot reserves directly to Greece and into the European system, bypassing gatekeepers.

The 2020 Athens intergovernmental agreement codified that aim – diversification as sovereignty. The interface is in place.

The Commission’s PCI fiche lists EastMed as anchored at Megalopoli, with a capacity of 12 bcm. From there, the Vertical Corridor carries volumes north.

In January 2022, Washington withdrew political support, citing commercial and environmental grounds while advancing electricity interconnection. Ankara was explicit. Israeli gas reaching Europe should transit Turkey.

Soon after, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Nord Stream was disabled.

The Ukrainian route closed. Russian gas continued to enter Europe via TurkStream. Russian molecules generated eastern revenues under Turkish invoices.

That is laundering.

Traceability matters as much as capacity. A corridor built to end laundering can reproduce it if the origin is masked.

The Vertical Corridor is the corrective.

Greek gateway

Greece serves as the southern gateway via LNG terminals at Revithoussa and Alexandroupolis, linked to Bulgaria and Romania, and onward to Central Europe. Southern entry. Northern distribution. Within EU jurisdiction.

The corridor is not a new pipe but incremental network upgrades – compressors, metering stations and cross-border capacity that can be booked and moved.

Not a map but a product. Route 1, a joint monthly capacity offer running from Greece to Ukraine across the Trans-Balkan interconnection points, secures winter flows despite regulatory and capacity constraints.

Its first valve is IGB, built for 3 bcm per year and now expanding to 5 bcm. The southern gate in Alexandroupolis has been operational since late 2024 and has a capacity of 5.5 bcm. Early outages showed why redundancy outweighs rhetoric.

The corridor’s non-Russian lifeline is measurable.

The Solidarity Ring targets upgrades to move 5 to 9.5 bcm of Azerbaijani gas per year through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia, turning diversification into measurable capacity rather than a slogan.

Incomplete spine

Without a sovereign Mediterranean source, the northern spine remains incomplete. LNG offers flexibility, not autonomy.

EastMed was meant to provide that layer, a direct supply embedded within European geography rather than mediated through Turkish territory.

Together, they form a continuous line from the Levantine basin to the heart of Europe.

Without both, Europe remains reliant on Russian origin or Turkish mediation.

American priorities differ.

Under Biden, EastMed was deemed inconvenient. Under Trump, corridor diplomacy expanded, yet Turkish centrality persisted.

Washington’s calculus remains consistent – preserve alliance cohesion, maximise LNG leverage, avoid direct confrontation with Ankara in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Those priorities are American. They are not European.

For Washington, corridors are instruments within a global portfolio.

For Europe, they determine domestic exposure. That divergence explains EastMed’s sidelining in Washington and its urgency in Athens, Nicosia and Brussels.

The same dynamic unfolds in the South Caucasus. Reopening transit links between Armenia and Azerbaijan, including the corridor to Nakhchivan, is framed as a means of conflict resolution, and peace is welcome.

Yet the transport geometry binds the Caspian more tightly to routes terminating in Turkey.

US Vice President J.D. Vance’s visit conferred American legitimacy on a corridor design that consolidates Ankara as the western gateway to Eurasian transit.

Reducing Russian and Iranian leverage is necessary. Replacing it shifts the gatekeeper.

U.S.-backed reopening of Caucasus routes strengthens Turkish primacy just as Europe claims to dilute transit concentration. Intent does not change outcome.

Europe elevated the Trans-Caspian Corridor as a diversification. Volumes have risen sharply since 2022.

Transit concentration risk

It is framed as resilience. Yet Russia’s resilience, which consolidates dependency elsewhere, merely redistributes exposure.

A corridor bypassing Moscow yet terminating in Ankara embeds transit concentration risk.

Kazakhstan’s invitation into the Abraham Accords exposed branding divorced from geography.

Kazakhstan anchors the Middle Corridor, a Eurasian transit architecture feeding into Turkey, yet it was recast as Indo-Mediterranean expansion.

In Jerusalem, the announcement brought embarrassment rather than applause. Ministers were instructed to stay silent.

IMEC partners sought clarity on which map Washington intended to advance. Presented as corridor diplomacy, it fractured alignment and reinforced the axis it claimed to counter.

Infrastructure demands coherence. This was performance, not policy.

The Red Sea crisis clarified the stakes. Houthi attacks cut Suez traffic, forced ships around Africa and drove up insurance costs.

Instability at Bab al-Mandeb reroutes cargo toward overland corridors, directly strengthening Turkey’s transit leverage.

Ankara holds control

Ankara publicly condemns Western strikes while signalling understanding toward the Houthis.

Investigations trace Turkish nodes within wider proxy networks. Unified command is irrelevant. The effect is systemic. Southern disruption consolidates Ankara’s control over Eurasian transit gravity.

Europe’s error is fragmentation. Energy in the Balkans, transit in the Caucasus, cables in the Eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea disruption are treated as discrete theatres. They are competing maps of dependency.

One map runs through Turkish-controlled nodes. TurkStream into Southeast Europe. Gas hub ambitions. Middle Corridor linkages. Pressure on Eastern Mediterranean surveys.

The other runs through sovereign Mediterranean anchors. EastMed supply. Greek LNG gateways feeding the Vertical Corridor.

Electricity interconnection binds the Eastern Mediterranean to the European grid.

Bulgaria sits at the seam, the hinge of the Vertical Corridor, yet treated it as revenue, not sovereignty.

It built and profited from the Bulgarian leg of TurkStream, imposed a transit levy on Russian gas, then withdrew it under EU pressure. Corridor policy reduced to short-term arbitrage.

Politically toxic

The problem is contractual. The 13-year Bulgargaz-BOTAS agreement, marketed as diversification via Turkish LNG access, proved politically toxic, fiscally punitive and subject to prosecutorial scrutiny after substantial payments for unused capacity.

This is dependence rerouted through a Turkish interface.

The exposure is both institutional and infrastructural. Ankara cultivated institutional reach inside Bulgaria through networks linked to the Turkish-speaking Muslim community and channels associated with the Diyanet.

Political interference has been documented. Religious structures have functioned as influence vectors.

Energy decisions in Sofia intersect with a political ecosystem permeable to external leverage.

Structurally, reliance on Turkish infrastructure reduces a transit state to a derivative. Not a hub but an extension.

Europe applauds the Middle Corridor while neglecting its Mediterranean spine. A contradiction markets and adversaries recognise.

EastMed without the Vertical Corridor leaves the south stranded.

The Vertical Corridor without EastMed leaves the north exposed to LNG volatility and Russian-origin gas routed through Turkey.

The structural answer is clear. Complete a southern-northern axis anchored in European space — Mediterranean supply.

Northbound transmission under EU regulation. Electrical integration binds Cyprus to the European grid, which has already been tested under naval shadow.

Control the gateways, and you control the system. Corridors decide who governs access.

The original article with EUalive’s partner LevantIntel can be found here.

Energy ministers from the United States, Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Moldova, Ukraine, Croatia, Lithuania, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina on 24 February 2026 agreed to strengthen natural gas supply security in Central and Eastern Europe through the Vertical Corridor, signing in Washington a joint declaration aimed at boosting regional energy resilience. [@DByers21 on X]

Updated: February 25, 2026 - 10:52