The Diplomat
The European Commission yesterday avoided pronouncing on the rejection of the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, to the MidCat gas pipeline project at the time that the third vice president and Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, stated that the debate on this issue “is open”.
“We cannot have a concrete position at this time,” Commission Energy spokesman Tim McPhie said during a press conference in Brussels. “Any additional cross-border infrastructure project linking the Iberian peninsula with the rest of the European Union needs further assessments from the countries involved and the project promoters, which is why the Commission cannot take a position,” he continued.
Therefore, only when the Member States and the promoters advance in the analysis on the feasibility of the project “we will be in a position to give our opinion on a precise project,” added the spokesman, who also recalled that MidCat is not part of the latest updated list of Projects of Common Interest (PCI) that receive Community funds.
For her part, Teresa Ribera stated at the press conference following the Council of Ministers that the debate on MidCat remains “open”. “I think it is important to understand what the Commission has said and what it has not said,” she warned. “What it has said is that this is a project that is not on the list of projects of Community interest. Because it is true that this list, which is updated with a certain periodicity, is prior to the debate that has arisen at this time in the European context,” she said. However, she added, MidCat does appear in the annex of important infrastructures of the RepowerEu plan, which “was adopted by the heads of state and government at the proposal of the European Commission before the summer”.
The vice-president also defended the need for this type of infrastructure at an “exceptional” time like the present and recalled that Spain is in favor that the pipeline can also be used in the future to transport green hydrogen.
Macron expressed his rejection of MidCat on Monday on the grounds that the two current gas pipelines between Spain and France (the Irun and Larrau-Calahorra pipelines) are already used at 53% of their capacity and make it unnecessary to tackle a third interconnection project. “We are not in the process of saturating the existing connections and there is no need for Spain to export its gas capacities to France,” he declared.
The president made these statements during a press conference after holding a videoconference with the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, dedicated to the energy situation of both countries. Precisely, Scholz himself and the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, jointly showed their support for the project last week. The MidCat project has been paralyzed for years due to its high costs and the low price of the Russian supply. There are 226 kilometers of pipeline to be built from the Catalan town of Hostalric to the French town of Barbaira, and Spain is asking the EU to cover the costs.
