  Parker's coronal braiding and nanoflaring scenario predicts the development
of tangential discontinuities and highly misaligned magnetic field lines, as a
consequence of random buffeting of their footpoints due to the action of
sub-photospheric convection. The increased stressing of magnetic field lines is
thought to become unstable above some critical misalignment angle and to result
into local magnetic reconnection events, which is generally referred to as
Parker's `nanoflaring scenario'. In this study we show that the {\sl minimum
(magnetic) energy principle} leads to a bifurcation of force-free field
solutions for helical twist angles at $|\varphi(t)| = \pi$, which prevents the
build-up of arbitrary large free energies and misalignment angles. The minimum
energy principle predicts that neighbored magnetic field lines are almost
parallel (with misalignment angles of $\Delta \mu \approx
1.6^\circ-1.8^\circ$), and do not reach a critical misalignment angle prone to
nanoflaring. Consequently, no nanoflares are expected in the divergence-free
and force-free parts of the solar corona, while they are more likely to occur
in the chromosphere and transition region.
