The French president will finally have won his case.
On Thursday October 20, on the sidelines of the European Council, Emmanuel Macron, Pedro Sánchez and António Costa officially announced the death of the MidCat project.
This gas pipeline which was to cross the Pyrenees to connect Catalonia to France, “which Paris was strongly opposed for strategic but also environmental reasons”, note The country, therefore will not happen. The decision was taken by the leaders of France, Portugal and Spain, and Pedro Sánchez announced the news with these words reported by the Madrid daily:
“We have reached an agreement to replace the MidCat project with a new project, which will be called a ‘green energy corridor’ and which will connect the Iberian Peninsula to France.”
This corridor, then explained the head of the Spanish government, will take the form of“a pipeline for green hydrogen”, which will link Barcelona and Marseille by submarine, hence the already found nickname of “BarMar”.
The key to this agreement, according to the Spanish media, lies precisely in the fact that this pipeline “will not be a gas pipeline, which Macron refused, but a pipeline designed for green hydrogen, which will however be able to transport gas from time to time. It’s a very different concept.” Thus, in the event of an energy crisis requiring the use of gas, BarMar will be able to transport it, but it will mainly be designed to transport greener energy.
So here is a compromise likely to satisfy both the two Iberian countries and France for different reasons, concludes the Madrid media:
“This agreement makes it possible to achieve the objective of Spain and Portugal to emerge from their energy isolation while being ‘at the height of the French energy transition policy, as Macron said in this regard.”