Sánchez and Costa will meet on Friday with Scholz in Berlin one week before the EU leaders’ summit on energy

BRUSSELS, Oct. 12 () –

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Prime Minister of Portugal, António Costa, will meet next Friday with the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, a week before the summit of EU leaders in Brussels to decide on intervention measures in the energy market, within the framework of which it is being studied to extend the “Iberian exception” to the rest of the EU and Spain and Portugal claim to recover the Midcat gas pipeline project despite France’s reservations.

The meeting will take place at the Foreign Ministry starting at 6:30 p.m., as stated in the official agenda of the President of the Government, and will coincide with the Congress of the European Socialist Party that brings together the European leaders of social democracy in the German capital on Friday and Saturday.

The appointment, moreover, takes place a week before the heads of State and Government of the European Union meet in Brussels for the European Council on October 20 and 21, a summit in which the leaders hope to be able to examine a “clear” proposal from the European Commission with measures to intervene in the energy market.

A week ago, in Prague, the European leaders entrusted Brussels with a package of measures before the summit is held next week and the Community Executive has already said that it will put together its proposal on four axes: Encourage the reduction of energy demand , intervene in gas prices, guarantee solidarity between member states and facilitate joint gas purchases.

Then, Sánchez and the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, also announced an upcoming trilateral meeting with Costa to seek solutions to the fight for the MidCat gas pipeline to interconnect the Iberian Peninsula with the rest of the EU through the Pyrenees.

Madrid demands, with the support of Berlin, to rescue this project to contribute to the necessary diversification of the EU after the break with Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine, but Paris resists considering that it is not the necessary response, although after the last Macron summit he qualified his position by trusting that “pragmatic” solutions would be found.

The announced meeting of three of Sánchez, Macron and Costa does not yet have a date on the calendar although it was considered that it would be these days in Paris, but in any case the three leaders will have the opportunity to meet at the European Council next week.