BERLIN, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Two major European energy players have recently linked up with Gazprom for large electricity projects in Russia and Europe. Some politicians fear Europe's energy security is suffering as a consequence.

According to the Financial Times, Eon, the world's largest utility by sales, is considering building gas-fired power plants in Germany, Britain and Hungary with the Russian state-controlled energy giant, after the Germans had already announced they would enter the soon-to-be liberalized Russian power market. And Italy's electricity giant Enel is investing some $6 billion (one of the largest ever foreign direct investments by a singly company) in Russia to gain access to the largest and potentially most profitable untapped electricity market on the continent.

Yet while hopes for immense profits run high in the companies' top management circles, European politicians look with a sorrowful eye to concrete plans with Gazprom, the Kremlin's most powerful energy and sometimes also foreign policy tool.

While investments in Russia aren't the problem (this has been tried in the past by several companies, with varying success), giving Gazprom access to end consumers in Europe has concerned policymakers from Madrid to Berlin.

Russia supplies half of the European Union's natural gas and roughly a third of its oil, and observers have in the past years called for an increased level of diversification instead of deepening old ties.