The threat of a cold winter and a worsening energy crisis fueled by the Kremlin's handling of gas has pushed the Twenty-seven to agree to a cut in gas consumption.
The energy ministers of the EU Member States have agreed this Wednesday on an energy saving plan to deal with Putin's "blackmail", as defined by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von de Leyen and the third Spanish vice president, Theresa Rivera.
After days of negotiations on a sensitive issue for their national policies, the regulation that the Twenty-seven have just promoted establishes a commitment to save 15% on gas, although it introduces numerous exceptions to lower that cut and get the largest number on board. of countries, each with its own characteristics.
Spain, which led the critical sector with the Commission's initial proposal, which provided for a linear snip for everyone, could obtain an exception that would reduce that saving effort by half.
A small victory for Ribera's team, which fought for the savings plan to consider Spain's “energy island” character, with few interconnections with other Member States.
"The Council of the EU has collected some exemptions and options to request an exception to the mandatory reduction target to reflect the particular situations of the Member States and ensure that gas reductions are effective," said Czech Industry Minister Jozef Síkela, this Tuesday, after the announcement of the Czech presidency team, which leads the EU this semester.
"The EU has taken a decisive step to put an end to Putin's threat to interrupt the gas supply," declared the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, upon learning of the agreement, which she applauded despite the considerable reduction on the text presented by your Executive.
The speed with which the agreement was reached on Tuesday was deduced from the statement made upon arrival at the meeting by the third Spanish vice president, Teresa Ribera.
“We are obliged to say yes”, admitted the also Minister for the Ecological Transition, who highlighted that in recent days much progress had been made on the initial plan presented by the European Commission, which Spain, Portugal, Poland or Ireland had flatly rejected.
The amended plan that has gone ahead this Tuesday has greatly softened the initial demands.
Brussels contemplates what could be considered an 'Iberian exception'.
The regulation, to which EL PAÍS has had access, indicates that the Member States may limit the mandatory reduction in demand by 8 percentage points as long as they demonstrate that their interconnector export capacities or their national Liquefied Natural Gas infrastructure are used to redirect gas to other Member States to the maximum.
Spain consumes an average of 22,900 million cubic meters (from August to March) of gas.
With the 15% set by Brussels, it should have cut 3.4 billion cubic meters.
The European Commission had offered to reduce the savings to 2,900 million cubic meters, but with the new exception, Spain could leave that snip up to around 1,700 million cubic meters of gas.
In the final energy saving plan, the European Commission would no longer have the absolute power to declare a state of alert, as contemplated in the original project, and such a decision -which implies, for example, that these percentages of voluntary savings be changed to mandatory, in addition to new solidarity shipments between states - must be submitted to a vote of the 27 member states.
The initiative to declare it may also start from the consensus of five countries.
In addition, the gas used to fill the reserves will be deducted from the computation of gas consumed, so the reduction percentage will be applied to a smaller volume.
States with a greater dependence on gas in their energy
mix
(in Spain it is approximately 24%, as in the EU average) may also claim that the consumption of essential industries is not counted when calculating the mandatory cut.
In the same way, countries that for geographical reasons do not have an adequate interconnection with the European market or whose electricity production depends largely on gas, may request an exemption in the application of the cut.
The text approved this Tuesday is a political agreement that will later go through the ambassadors to the EU.
The threat of further gas shortages is even clearer now.
Russia has been handling the energy lever as a political weapon for years, but since the EU increased sanctions against Moscow for invading Ukraine and closed ranks in its support for the kyiv government, Russian President Vladimir Putin, that scenario appears more in the short term.
On Monday, Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, announced that it would further reduce flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, leaving it at a fifth of its capacity for “maintenance work”.
Before winter, a dozen countries are already facing reduced supplies of Russian gas.
