Eduardo González
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will appear tomorrow before the plenary session of Congress to report on the results of the European Councils of October and December 2022, in which several of the Spanish proposals on gas and electricity were addressed, and on the measures adopted to respond to the crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.
During the appearance (which will be made both at his own request and at the request of the Popular Parliamentary Group), Pedro Sánchez will report to the plenary session of the Lower House on the European Council of October 20 and 21 and the European Council of December 15. The last intervention of the President of the Government before the Congress to address both a European Council (on that occasion, a previous informal meeting in Prague dedicated to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the energy crisis and a subsequent and immediate official meeting in Brussels dedicated to the same issues) and the measures in response to the war took place last October 13.
On October 21, 2022, the Heads of State and Government of the 27 agreed in Brussels on a series of measures that, according to the President of the Government, will allow “extending the Iberian model, or something similar”, to the rest of the Union, “a mechanism that has already saved 2,900 million for our consumers”.
Specifically, the measures, proposed by the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, envisage a price ceiling for all gas imported into the EU, joint and centralized purchases of gas from third countries, a structural reform of the electricity market and the extension of the Iberian derogation to the whole of the EU. According to the Government, some of the main conclusions of that Council, such as the limitation of the price of gas, the development of specific ideas to establish a limit on the price of gas used for electricity generation, the joint purchase of gas or the recommendation to the Commission to speed up the work for a structural reform of the electricity market, are ideas that “Spain, together with other Member States, has been defending for months”.
Since June 15, Spain and Portugal have been governed by the so-called “Iberian mechanism”, which allows the price of gas used to produce electricity to be capped at 40 euros per megawatt/hour. The application of this mechanism was made possible after the European Council of March 25 approved the right of the two Iberian countries to manage their own reference gas prices for combined cycle power plants, in view of the “energy island” nature of the peninsula due to its very low interconnection with the European energy market.
On the other hand, the European Council approved last December 15, and the EU Energy Ministers corroborated four days later, a temporary correction mechanism to limit excessive gas prices, which will be applied as from February 15 of this year and for a period of one year.
In his appearance tomorrow, Pedro Sánchez will also explain to the MPs the measures adopted in response to the crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. Precisely, a few hours before the intervention of the President of the Government, the plenary will debate the Royal Decree approved last December 27th by the Council of Ministers on “measures in response to the economic and social consequences of the war in Ukraine”. This Royal Decree (which gives continuity to the National Response Plan to the Russian War in Ukraine, approved by the Government last March and which has been extended and expanded with subsequent rules to reduce inflation and adapt the Spanish economy to the new economic environment) establishes measures to contain the general level of prices, especially of certain fundamental goods such as food, raw materials and some intermediate goods.
