The Diplomat
The need to address the effects of the war in Ukraine with European energy measures took center stage at a meeting organized by the French ambassador to Spain, Jean-Michel Casa, with the ambassadors of EU member states accredited in Spain and the third vice-president and minister for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge of the Government, Teresa Ribera.
“Today more than ever, the geopolitical context we face must be an impetus for our climate ambitions,” said Jean-Michel Casa during the working meeting, held last Wednesday in the framework of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which began on January 1. “The European Union must move away as soon as possible from hydrocarbons, especially Russian fossil fuels,” he warned.
“In the context of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, new and urgent questions arise: the price of electricity, the security of our supplies and the issue of a better interconnection of our energy networks, on a European scale,” recalled the ambassador, who proposed, therefore, a “coordinated and coherent response among the 27 Member States.”
For her part, Teresa Ribera warned of the need to “tackle the conjunctural with palliative measures to contain the repercussions of the armed conflict on the European economy and, at the same time, accelerate structural changes to speed up decarbonization and strengthen Europe’s energy autonomy through renewables, efficiency, electrification and storage”.
Likewise, she continued, “it is essential to avoid in the short term the contagion effect of gas on electricity prices, as some Member States have been advocating in recent months, and to repair a European market that is totally distorted and does not obey any economic logic”. “Spain and Portugal are working with the European Commission on the design of a mechanism that, taking into account the limited interconnection of the Iberian market, reduces the exposure of electricity prices to gas prices and safeguards the integrity of the European market without generating any additional distortion”, she continued.
This is the fourth meeting organized by the French ambassador in the framework of the French Presidency of the EU. The European ambassadors have already met on three other occasions with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares; the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska; and the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles.
