After nine hours of negotiation, the European Council gives the green light to the request of both countries as it is a market with peculiarities
After nine and a half hours of negotiation, the European Union has yielded to pressure from Spain and Portugal and the European Council will include in its conclusions the “special treatment” of these two countries in the adoption of measures to curb the price of energy.
All the leaders were clear that it was necessary to take “urgent measures” to deal with the rise in electricity, but the positions on how to do it were very different. On the table were the proposals of the European Commission, which included temporary measures such as limiting the price of energy. An option defended by countries such as Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Greece and Italy, but which was rejected by a block led by Germany and the Netherlands, considering that an intervention in this sense would distort the energy market.
Finally, the European Council admits the character of ‘energy island’ of Spain and Portugal and opens the door for these two countries to take specific measures to lower energy prices. The text will now go to the European Commission, which will have to evaluate this “special treatment” and limit what kind of actions these two countries can carry out.
Waiting jointly for the President of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, and the Prime Minister of Portugal, Antonio Costa, both countries have managed to get the rest of the partners to recognize that the Iberian Peninsula has “a special situation, a high load of renewables and very few interconnections”. Given this situation, they are granted a “special treatment” so that they can manage electricity prices in the manner discussed in the Council, according to government sources. It will be in the next Council of Ministers, on the 29th, when the Government implements the agreed measures in energy matters, within the National Plan to combat the effects of the war.
Before the meeting, Pedro Sánchez had internalized that the complex decision to unlink the price of gas from that of electricity will not have the approval of the Council of Europe. For this reason, before starting the sessions, Sánchez `asked to take into account the “particularity” of the Iberian Peninsula in energy matters and accept that Spain and Portugal can limit prices.
The president insisted on adopting “a solution for all”, on equal terms. In this sense, he has stressed that the Peninsula has a “minimum interconnection with the European energy market” below 3% and has defended that this is “perfectly compatible” with other measures such as joint purchases of gas or more in the long term structural reform of the energy market.
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