Spain relies on a tacit alliance with the Czech presidency so that there is a European cap on gas in December

The blocking of the Commission’s text leaves the work in the hands of the Council, which is chaired this semester by the Czech Republic, which is inclined to the Spanish thesis.

The absolute failure of the extraordinary council of energy ministers on Thursday was taken as a success by the third vice president of the Spanish Government. Teresa Ribera left Brussels “optimistic”, assuming that “there will be an agreement” in December for the imposition of a cap on the price of gas operating for the entire EU.

Once the Commission’s proposal has been rejected outright, the work is left to the rotating presidency of the Council. And Czech Minister Josef Sikela, who thinks similar to the group of 15 rebels, will handle it. This is confirmed by the European sources consulted by this newspaper.

Perhaps that is why Ribera dared to go further and anticipated that, once the three legs of the energy reform underway come into force, “we should not see such high prices in the coming months.” A prediction, accompanied by a broad smile, which came after, yes, many circumlocutions calling for “prudence” and noting the “division”, although celebrating the “will to agree” and the “commitment to unity”.

There are also two other symptoms that indicate that the null practical result of what happened this Thursday in the Council building was read by the Spanish delegation with joy.

The first, that the official sources of the Ministry of Ecological Transition stopped influencing the “massive indignation” and the “capital anger” with which the Brussels document had been received.

Now it was time to say that “unity” was demonstrated in that, in view of the position of strength of 15 member states, “the rest accepted” their defeat.

The second symptom had been detected before the Council meeting, although its details were only known hours later.

All or nothing

The arrival of the ministers was delayed by just under an hour because the 15 ‘rebels’ had called a prior appointment to coordinate strategies. “In less than half an hour, it became clear that there was agreement on everything,” explains a source present at the meeting.

So that in less than 30 minutes 15 ministers speak and agree coming from countries as far away and situations as different as France, Poland, Italy and Spain (large); Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Romania (bordering the war); or Mediterranean such as Greece, Malta, Croatia and Slovenia, among others, it is because “everything was spoken”.

The Brussels proposal had reached the chancelleries 24 hours earlier and “contacts were constant among all.” Calls and exchanges of documents with a single objective: that paper had to be stopped. And the best way was to invoke the blocking majority so that nothing would pass if not everything could be approved. Or rather, since “it could not be approved” everything.

All this despite the “urgency” that runs to the institutions and the Twenty-seven in the other two proposals that were submitted to evaluation in the Council: the acceleration of investments in renewables and the creation of a mechanism for the joint purchase of gas.

Both the Czech minister and the Energy Commissioner, Kadri Simson, celebrated with a bad face that both documents “are more than fully agreed”.

And it is that the success of the consensus was accompanied by the blockade to its entry into force. “We must be aware that if our economies fall, we will not be able to help our Ukrainian partners and friends,” Simson said.

As a result of Vladimir Putin’s “criminal and savage” bombings, there are already “millions” of citizens who “have no heating, electricity or water” in Ukraine

The Czech presidency agreed on this, urging consensus “given that in two of the three documents there is already total agreement and they could enter into force.”

Although Minister Sikela further evidenced – with an irrefutable argument for pro-European – the harmony of the Czech presidency with the Spanish position, adding that it would be “counterproductive” to promote a race of public aid from the Member States to their companies.

It was an explicit wake-up call to Germany. Olaf Scholz’s plan endowed with more than 200,000 million in subsidies so that its companies and industries can cope with high energy prices, has stirred up the rest of the EU partners and explains the reason for its refusal to a cap on the price of the most ambitious gas.

Cross pressure

Now, the three-week delay until the next extraordinary Energy Council has three effects. The first, according to the sources consulted, that if it is the Czechs who pilot the work, it is expected that the agreement will be more similar to what Spain aspires, in line with the club of 15 rebels and its letter last September.

Above all, because whether or not this “desire for consensus” is true, time is running against Berlin and Amsterdam, the only capitals truly satisfied with the conditions set by the Commission. The pressure is now on Germany and the Netherlands, because December 13 is almost winter: it will be colder, in those countries restrictions have already been decreed. And although European gas reserves are at 94%, everything will be stopped until everything is agreed.

And the blocking capacity of a majority of Member States dissatisfied with the design put on the table by the Commission has already become clear. In fact, there was even agreement in the qualification of the Brussels document: if Ribera labeled it a “joke”, other ministers described it as a “joke in bad taste”.

But we must not lose sight of the pressure in the medium term, which returns to the Peninsula. The gas cap is intended to be the transitional mechanism that helps contain prices until the Twenty-seven completely reform the energy market, a work that does not expect its first steps before next spring.

And at the end of May the so-called “Iberian exception” declines, whose validity would make less sense the day there is a common maximum price for all… although this, in the end, does not end up being the one desired by Spain.

Source: The Spanish