<h6><strong>Ane Barcos</strong></h6> <h4><strong>Just one week after the blackout that left a large part of the Iberian Peninsula without electricity, Teresa Ribera insisted this Monday on the need to approach the incident with caution.</strong></h4> "We must fully understand what happened," stressed the European Commission's Executive Vice President for the Net, Fair and Competitive Transition, recalling that the relevant mechanisms have already been activated to carry out an in-depth analysis of what happened. Ribera participated in a dialogue organized by the Association of European Journalists of Catalonia, where she acknowledged the seriousness of the incident, but also highlighted the speed with which the electricity system was restored. She assured that the entire episode "before, during, and after" will be subject to scrutiny by multiple actors, both at the national and European levels. The Executive Vice President directly criticized those who have taken advantage of the crisis to question the role of renewable energy. She denounced what she described as a "trigger-happy" approach to this energy model, lamenting the "somewhat surprising" targeting of renewables, especially considering a transformation that, she said, has allowed Europe to "become much more autonomous, reduce costs, and provide stable and modern prices." Ribera emphasized that, thanks to this energy and industrial revolution, European consumers have been able to save more than €100 billion during the energy crisis caused by Russian blackmail. "Let's not confuse our enemies," she warned. The European Commission has already called for avoiding speculation while the investigation continues. Following confirmation from Spain's Red Eléctrica that it was not a cyberattack, Brussels emphasized that the incident highlights the urgency of strengthening electrical interconnections between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of the continent, especially with France. Along these lines, Ribera noted that what happened reflects the growing complexity of the current electricity system, in which the massive presence of renewable energy requires more sophisticated, digitalized, interconnected networks with storage capacity. "We are no longer facing a system with 10 or 15 large plants. It's much more complex," he stated, adding that safety protocols must also adapt to this new reality. He considered that one of the most obvious lessons of the blackout is the need to strengthen investment in modern and resilient networks, an idea that the European Commission itself has also strongly supported. Ribera clarified that, although the European Commission has made itself available to the governments of Spain and Portugal from the outset, he specified that, by protocol, the responsibility for activating independent technical monitoring falls on the electricity transmission system operators, who have already begun coordinating through the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E). This body, in collaboration with the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and experts from several European countries, will first prepare a preliminary report within six months. A final report will then be submitted before September 2026 with a more detailed analysis of the incident and a series of recommendations to strengthen the resilience of the European electricity system.
