States have stipulated so many exceptions that there is a risk of gas shortages in extreme cold.
The energy ministers of the EU countries agreed on Tuesday on a largely voluntary plan to save gas, which, due to numerous exceptions, does not prepare Europe for a winter that lasts longer than usual or brings particularly hard frost periods. “Even if all exceptions are fully exploited, we will achieve savings that will get us through a normal winter,” said EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson after the 27 ministers’ agreement.
She added that in this case, around 30 billion cubic meters of gas would be saved in the period from August 2022 to March 2023. However, she also said that a “long winter with periods of extreme frost” would require savings of 45 billion cubic meters of gas to compensate for the threatened Russian gas supply disruption. And this failure is to be expected, she warned: “Deliveries can stop at any time. We agree that we must prepare for the worst.”
Savings target reduced by a third
The European Commission based its proposal for this plan last week on precisely this scenario. “The storage level would remain at the minimum level of 15 percent at the end of March 2023, and the demand gap during the winter would correspond to 45 billion cubic meters,” says the communication, which she presented together with her draft regulation on Wednesday. That is why she had “requested all Member States to make their best efforts to continue investing in alternatives to Russian gas and to achieve a non-binding reduction target of 15 percent of their consumption for at least the next eight months, compared to the average needs of the past five years ( 2016 to 2021).”
This, it concludes, “would enable Europe-wide savings of 45 billion cubic meters over this period”.
But there is no longer any talk of Europe-wide savings, since the diplomats of the Member States have torn the Commission’s proposal beyond recognition and demanded all sorts of extra sausages. There is nothing left of the uniform 15 percent savings target.
Then first the island states of Ireland, Malta and Cyprus are excluded.
Secondly the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, whose electricity grids are linked to that of Russia, meaning that in the event of a likely Russian energy boycott against them, they will need all available gas to continue producing electricity.
Third Those countries whose gas storage facilities are more than 80 percent full as of August 1 can count all additional gas volumes that they use for storage towards the savings target.
Fourth critical industries are completely exempted from austerity; each state is free to define what these are.
Fifth there is an exception for states whose gas networks are not sufficiently connected to the European pipeline systems to be able to supply “significant quantities”: this is a concession to Spain and Portugal.
Sixth states are to be exempted from saving if “extraordinary circumstances” cause a problem in generating electricity in gas-fired power plants.
All this is to run for an indefinite period on a purely voluntary basis. Only in the event that at least five member states declare a gas emergency should the ministers introduce an obligation to save by a qualified majority (15 of 27 states, which together represent at least 65 percent of the Union population). And what if a state opposes this and refrains from saving, as Hungary immediately made clear on Tuesday with its only dissenting vote in the Council and in statements by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó? “The ministers did not talk about sanctions today,” Czech Energy Minister Jozef Síkela replied to this question from the “press”.
Court of Auditors shreds EU plans
The Commission’s proposal to use a package of measures called “Repower EU” to reduce dependence on Russia in the medium term was also sharply criticized by the European Court of Auditors on Tuesday. It is “difficult to implement in practice”, has “a number of inconsistencies” and is currently not sufficiently funded.