The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, assured yesterday that Spain “has nothing to fear” from Vladimir Putin’s energy “blackmail” and again offered Spain’s “enormous regasification capacity” to the rest of the EU, although, he warned, for this “interconnections through Midcat must be completed”.
“I think it is very difficult to find, since World War II, an international context so complex and so convulsive,” said Albares in Lugo before delivering the conference A complex international context in the framework of the Encontros cycle organized by the newspaper El Progreso. “The biggest health crisis, which has been the COVID-19 pandemic with all its economic and social consequences, the biggest health crisis in a century, has been followed by something unthinkable, which is the return of war to Europe,” he continued.
This conflict brings with it not only “humanitarian consequences” but also “economic and energy consequences, as we are seeing, with an increase in inflation in all the countries of Europe” and with “uncertainty about energy security, due to the blackmail to which Vladimir Putin is subjecting” the countries that depend on Russian gas. However, he assured, this blackmail “does not affect Spain because it is not at all dependent on Russian gas and, therefore, has nothing to fear”.
In any case, he declared, “of course, Spain is willing to make its enormous regasification capacity available to all European countries thanks to the plants that exist on the Iberian peninsula, but for that to happen, interconnections must be completed through the Midcat”, the gas pipeline recently rejected by France, considering it unnecessary.
As for the war in Ukraine itself, Albares regretted that, despite the fact that “in the last few days there has been a very notable advance of the Ukrainian Army, very important cities have been recovered and several Russian fronts have crumbled in a matter of hours”, and while it has been shown that “aid to Ukraine and sanctions are also proving effective, and are part of the reason for this rapid advance of the Ukrainian army,” the Russian president “has given no sign of wanting his soldiers to return to the Russian Federation, which they never had to leave.” “I think we are still far from the end of the war, let’s hope I am wrong,” he added. In any case, he assured, “Spain is responding with a lot of solidarity, with 140,000 Ukrainian refugees in the country.”
During the conference, Albares recalled that, “on the occasion of Spain’s presidency of the EU from July 2023, in addition to informal councils there will be meetings of European commissioners, of groups of ministers, and one of those will be in Lugo.” “The first informal European Council will come to Galicia, it will be the Fisheries Council, in Vigo, in July, right at the beginning of our presidency. There will also be another one that is especially important, the Ecofin, the Economic and Financial Council, in Santiago,” he added.
