Mr Schroeder, who enjoys close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was rumoured to be getting this job as soon as he resigned from his position following his Germany parliamentary election loss in November, 2005. On 30 March, the shareholders of the North European Gas Pipeline Co, which include Russia's natural gas monopoly Gazprom and Germany's E.ON Rurgasand BASF, gathered in Moscow to elect the supervisory council and its chairman. Gerhard Schroeder was voted into this position unanimously. As MosNews reported, Mr Schroeder has come under fire in Germany for establishing business ties with Russia soon after he was replaced by Angela Merkel last November. Leading German politicians from across the political spectrum criticized Schroeder for accepting the Gazprom job so soon after leaving office. This stance seems to be changing, however. Germany's Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, told Handelsblatt in an interview that, in his opinion, Mr Schroeder would be useful to Germany in his new position as the chairman of the new pipeline company. "Would it be better if the chairman was representative of some other country? From a German point of view, this is a very useful appointment," Steinmeier is reported to have said. He refuted the suggestion that such appointment "would give a political flair to a commercial enterprise". "The former federal Chancellor always promoted this project on the condition that it would satisfy not only German, but also European, interests in terms of gas deliveries," the minister went on to say. He said that many of Germany's western neighbours have already announced their interest in joining this project. "From today's point of view, this plan is fully justified," he said. The 1,210-km long pipeline will go from Russian town of Vyborg to Germany's Baltic coast, and it will by-pass such transit countries as Ukraine and Poland, leaving them with no levers of political influence on Russia. The plan has already stirred the new members of the European Union, such as the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia who proposed their own pipeline plan, called the Amber Pipeline. Poland has already called the pipeline a Russian-German conspiracy. The Germany Foreign Minister was asked whether construction of the pipeline and Western Europe's dependence on Russian gas would bring about the confrontation of East European states with "old" members of the European Union. He said that in his opinion there will be no confrontation. "I don't think there will be one," Steinmeier said, "not the least because the new member states don't have a single opinion. Some of them made negative statements about Russia. But the final documents of the EU summit state that in the interests of foreign policy and security policy EU has to strive for effective dialogue with oil and gas producing countries," the minister recalled.