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The European Comission seeks immediate solutions to deal with gas supply problems and the price crisis with which winter is being faced. A challenge that is faced with the threat of Russia and that demands the total unity of the member countries. The MidCat, the gas pipeline that connects Spain with France through the Pyrenees, will be one of the issues that the attendees will face.
Germany wants it to be reactivated. Spain sees an opportunity to be a gas benchmark in Europe. France, for its part, considers that this infrastructure is unnecessary and that the investment of 3,000 million needed to complete the work in its territory does not make sense. The European Comission defends that the MidCat is not on the list of Projects of Community Interest (PIC) but it is in the important infrastructures of the REPower EU Plan adopted by the European Union before the summer.
Brussels dropped this Tuesday that it will not finance this project and hinted at a possible support for the French cause. Although, as Moncloa points out, what the European Commission has basically done is ask for an agreement between member countries.
A point in which Spain wants its partner in this claim to take the initiative. Pedro Sanchez he wants the government he leads Olaf Scholz assume its weight in the Commission so that the team of Emmanuel Macron. France and Germany, the two large European economies, will have the last word on the measures that will be agreed this Friday and that will mark the coming years.
Spain wants Germany to promote this project to help it meet the 2020 and 2030 interconnection targets. “It is logical that when there is a coincidence of interests between those Member States through whose territory these infrastructures pass, it is simple. Also that in an exceptional moment like this, it may deserve a more in-depth debate, ”explained Minister Teresa Ribera on Tuesday.
Sánchez uses hydrogen
From Moncloa they see in the MidCat an infrastructure that will allow Spain in the future to be a great exporter of green hydrogen. A bet for the long term. But the energy crisis that is being experienced due to the dispute with Russia would allow it to put at the service of the countries of central Europe the capacity to import gas both by gas pipeline and by ship, thanks to its regasification.
If an agreement is reached with France to speed up this infrastructure, through European funding in the context of REPowerEUcould be placed as a solution to Russia’s economic energy suffocation “in the next year”, as estimated by the Government.
Ribera will open the debate
“I think it is a debate that is open and will be one of the issues raised in the council on Friday and it will be one of the questions that will hold the interest of European leaders for a long time: how to respond to the need to guarantee security of supply in central and northern Europe this winter and next winter”, he explained this Tuesday Minister Teresa Ribera after the Council of Ministers.
“If there is any member state that considers that this proposal is not the best to meet Germany’s demand or that it has technical or financial problems that must be resolved, it is good and healthy, with that pro-European spirit that Macron raised yesterday, that it can be raised”, he added. A sentence that ventures that the MidCat will warm up the atmosphere with France at the meeting this Friday.
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