The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, will meet on Tuesday in Berlin with the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, with whom he shares the desire to boost Spain’s gas interconnection through the Pyrenees and of which he will try to convince the French President, Emmanuel Macron, despite misgivings.
Sánchez, who is on a Latin American tour that includes Colombia, Ecuador and Honduras, referred to this energy interconnection with France at a press conference he held alongside Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Wednesday.
He recalled that the European Commission already recognizes this connection as a priority in its energy plans for the future and thanked Scholz for his interest in promoting it as he publicly claimed a few days ago. But he warned that if France maintains its rejection, there is a plan B that is also among the Commission’s alternatives: an energy interconnection of Spain with Italy.
In an informal conversation with journalists covering the Latin American tour, Sánchez explained that he is not giving up the option of the connection through France and that, in fact, he will try to persuade the French that it is the best option, the most rational.
He acknowledged that France did unblock pending electricity connections, but not gas, and he hopes that Macron will be convinced and his country will not be a bottleneck to allow the Iberian Peninsula to stop being an energy island and contribute to the response that Europe must give to the “energy blackmail” of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
Scholz’s position ensured that the German chancellor has already defended it several times, but that now is when the appeal he has made to promote this interconnection has had more impact.