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The third vice president, Teresa Ribera, and her Portuguese counterpart, Duarte Cordeiro, announce an agreement to cap the price at €50MWh compared to the €30 initially proposed
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The price intervention mechanism will be valid for twelve months and its effects, according to Ribera, will begin to be noticed in the bill for the month of May
The governments of Spain and Portugal They arrived this Tuesday at a “political agreement & rdquor; with the European Commission on a proposal to capping the gas price at €50 MWh and thus reduce the price of the electricity bill paid by consumers and companies. After several weeks of intense negotiations, the third vice president and minister of ecological transition, Theresa Riveraand its Portuguese counterpart, Jose Duarte Cordeirohave closed an agreement with the vice president and head of Community Executive Competition, Margrethe Vestageron an intervention instrument that will be in force for the next twelve months.
“It is a good agreement that protects us against the turbulence that we are seeing & rdquor ;, Ribera celebrated during a joint appearance in Brussels that has put the climax to “a cordial, constructive and intense meeting” held with the Danish Liberal. The commitment, explained Ribera, materializes and develops the political pact that the presidents closed Pedro Sanchez Y Anthony Costa during the European Council held at the end of March in Brussels, in which they started the commitment to apply an “Iberian exception & rdquor; given the high level of renewables and the limited electrical interconnections with the rest of the European continent, which makes the Peninsula an “energy island”.
Although there is no specific date for the approval of the new mechanism by the community competition services, both Spain and Portugal trust that Brussels will give the green light in the next days the decision once all the technical details are outlined. “We trust that in the next few days after completing the procedure we can have the support of the European Commission to implement it”, explained Duarte Cordeiro.
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“The main lines of the agreement have been resolved after weeks of technical work. The changes produced in the notification must be defined and reflected. In principle, we believe that before the weekend we will have this formal part resolved with the European Commission and that it could be presented to the Council of Ministers in the case of Spain next week & rdquor ;, Ribera added on the next steps. The application, he specified, would be immediate and the impact could be reflected in the electricity bill for the month of may.
As explained by both political leaders, the mechanism, which will be valid for twelve months and will provide coverage until the end of next winter, will start in the first few months with an average reference price for gas of €40MWh, above the 30 euros that both governments had initially proposed, but well below the current €90 and will stand at an average of €50 during the period the mechanism is in force. This will allow the cost of electricity to be reduced immediately, especially, the government explained, for those whose price is indexed to the daily market. In addition, as explained by Ribera, the Commission has also committed to working to increase the percentage of interconnections with the rest of Europe.