The European Union launched a legal attack on Gazprom on Wednesday, stoking tension with Moscow as it accused the Russian gas giant of overcharging buyers in Eastern Europe and hindering competition. The Kremlin appeared to take a conciliatory tone, saying it hoped for compromise and an impartial stance from EU regulators. The EU’s new antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, who a week ago announced a similar market abuse prosecution against U.S. tech giant Google, said state-controlled Gazprom was using its continued dominance in Moscow’s old Soviet client states to hike prices by as much as 40 percent over the norm. It could do so, she said, by insisting on contracts that bar customers selling on gas to others, notably across borders, which she described as a hindrance of free markets that broke EU law. It has also been an obstacle to EU efforts to supply Ukraine. Another […]