French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz meet on the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels October 20, 2022 (POOL/Olivier HOSLET)
EU leaders met in Brussels on Thursday to try to find a common response to the energy boost, an equation complicated by the increasingly visible divide between Paris and Berlin.
The war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia have rocked oil, gas and electricity prices. But since February, Europe has been slow to respond, weakened by the diverging interests of member countries.
The Franco-German couple, the engine of European cooperation, seems to have collapsed. A meeting of ministers from both countries planned for October 26 in Fontainebleau (France) has been postponed to January.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that Berlin was playing a lone goal and apparently blamed the Germans for Europe’s troubles.
“I think it’s neither good for Germany nor for Europe that it isolating itself (…). Our job is to do everything we can to ensure that there is European unity and that Germany is part of it,” he said.
“It is very clear that Germany has always acted very united,” said Olaf Scholz.
The Chancellor was accused of selfishness after she announced a support plan of 200 billion euros for the German economy that had not been agreed with her partners at the end of September.
The two leaders saw each other one-on-one just before the twenty-seven meet.
Progress has been announced on an infrastructure project that has stalled for years. France, Spain and Portugal have announced an agreement to replace the MidCat project with an undersea pipeline between Barcelona and Marseille, designed to transport gas and then green hydrogen.
Launched in 2003, the MidCat project (abbreviation of Midi-Catalonia) was defended by Lisbon, Madrid and Berlin, but met resistance from Paris. The aim was to connect the French and Spanish gas networks via a 190-kilometer pipeline from Hostalric north of Barcelona to Barbaira east of Carcassonne through the Pyrenees.
– Company at risk
Brussels has launched a series of initiatives to reduce energy consumption, lower prices and ensure security of supply, but difficulties persist.
However, there is an emergency with thousands of European companies fearing for their survival, threatened by competition in the United States or in Asia, where prices have remained wiser.
Several diplomats expect very long talks between the 27 heads of state and government that will last into the night.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz in front of the Bundestag in Berlin on October 20, 2022 (AFP / Tobias SCHWARZ)
In an interview with AFP, Spanish Minister for Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera openly criticized the work of the European Commission.
“The proposals are still a bit tentative: we still lack concrete measures on a large majority of the issues. There has certainly been real effort for a year (…) but it is frustrating to see how slow and arduous Europe’s response to the challenge we are facing is,” she said.
But Commission President Ursula von der Leyen faces differences of opinion between the Twenty-Seven, each with their own energy mix, some relying on nuclear power, others on gas or even coal to generate electricity.
They are particularly divided on the question of capping the price of gas for electricity generation. A device of this type is already being used in Spain and Portugal, where it has helped to lower prices.
Several countries, including France, are calling for this mechanism, known as “Iberian”, to be extended at EU level.
But Germany is against it, as are several Nordic countries, including Denmark and the Netherlands, which oppose government intervention in the markets.
The RWE coal-fired power plant in Lützerath, western Germany, on October 16, 2022 ( AFP / INA FASSBENDER )
Berlin believes that artificially lowering the price of gas would undermine the goal of energy sobriety by encouraging people to consume more.
However, the draft conclusions of the summit called on the Commission to prepare a proposal for this instrument. “The Iberian model deserves to be studied. Questions remain, but I don’t want to overlook any clues,” von der Leyen said on Wednesday.
Ms von der Leyen outlined other proposals this week: joint gas purchases, new rules to try to enforce gas sharing in Europe to help the countries most struggling, or even a reform of the TTF gas market index (the European “Gas Exchange”), which is used as a benchmark for operator transactions.