The technicians of the European Commission have received with suspicion the proposal of Spain and Portugal to limit the price of gas to 30 euros/megawatt hour and see it as excessive in a preliminary analysis.
Community sources point out to this newspaper that such a low ceiling can lead to a distortion beyond what is acceptable in the European market.
The Spanish government has played hard and, after a tug-of-war with the Portuguese, has decided to propose a maximum reference price that would force a reduction in electricity of more than half on current costs.
By limiting the ceiling at which combined cycle plants can offer in the electrical system to 30 euros MWh, the price of electricity could go from the current more than 200 MWh to around 100, according to experts consulted.
However, such a drastic cut is viewed with reservations in the Commission's teams, according to the sources consulted by this newspaper, although a Brussels spokesperson refers for now to the examination to which the plan is going to undergo without even pointing out if it is excessive .
The president of the European Commission,
Ursula Von der Leyen
, committed at the end of the European Council on the 24th to a "special treatment" for Spain and Portugal due to their status as energy islands.
That permission to the Iberians to intervene in the market while the rest of the partners is prohibited is already a delicate step for the European Commission and if it is also an excessive intervention it can affect other European electrical systems and industries, no matter how much there is an interconnection barrier in the Pyrenees.
The third vice president,
Teresa Ribera,
implicitly confirmed these community misgivings this Thursday by presenting the 30 euros MWh as negotiable and as a maximum position for Spain and Portugal.
“
We have only just begun to work with the Commission
, so I would ask for calm and patience.
We have proposed the cheapest price of gas at which we understand this adjustment should take place, €30/MWh, but it is one of the technical elements of the proposal that we have to discuss with the European Commission”, she declared this Thursday in León.
"
It is the minimum that can be considered as a starting position,
" explained the economic vice president,
Nadia Calviño
, already admitting that the community green light for that figure will not be possible.
In fact, although he has ended up assuming it, the 30 MWh seemed frivolous to him a few days ago when Podemos raised it.
Another sign that the government is not clear about approval is its resistance to making the proposal public.
It was reported by the Portuguese newspaper
Publico
and only hours later Ribera confirmed it at a ceremony in the capital of León.
He was also careful to try to explain that the designed system would not, in his opinion, entail a distortion with France.
It consists of "
introducing a system of double matching, one at the border
so that electricity exports are remunerated at the price that would correspond in the absence of an adjustment mechanism;
and a second matching, where the adjustment is introduced and the payment above the cost of the gas is automatically assigned in that margin that remains of much cheaper technologies up to the price that the gas has been paid in the first instance.
In other words, a price for France and another internal, which Brussels must evaluate if it is realistic since the operators are the same.
In any case, the Government proposes it as "temporary" and with compensation to the combined cycle plants that will no longer be able to offer their electricity generated with gas at the market price.
In order not to add difficulties in Brussels, Spain and Portugal rule out compensating the gas companies with public money and foresee a surcharge on the receipt for consumers to pay.
However, they would benefit from the strong reduction in the receipt, if Brussels accepts.
Meanwhile, the Podemos ministers immediately claimed the figure of 30 euros as it was the one they initially raised to the anger of the first vice president, Nadia Calviño.
She made the data ugly for them and urged the Government not to speak "lightly."
The head of Equality,
Irene Montero
, recalled that it is the figure that Podemos proposed, although unlike Ribera, she has already considered it "achieved" in Brussels, but there are still weeks of negotiation and Calviño assumes that it is on the rise.
The origin of the negotiation is that the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, announced last Friday that they had received a license to establish a limit on the price of gas outside the European market, as the peninsula is "a energy island.
It was at the end of the European Council and, although the Iberian exception was not expressly included in the conclusions, it was accepted in public statements by Von der Leyen and the German chancellor,
Olaf Scholz
.
Sánchez announced on Monday that this week Spain and Portugal would present an
"exceptional and temporary"
measure to Brussels and stressed that this measure "
does not mean subsidizing gas
, it does not break the incentives for renewables or electricity flows between countries" and will allow Spain and Portugal "significantly lower electricity prices immediately" and without "distorting" the electricity market in Europe.
"I am convinced that the approval by the European Commission will take place in a very short period of time and
the next day it will be approved in the Official State Gazette
with immediate effects on citizens' electricity bills" , he underlined.
Ribera assumes that the conversations will be long both due to the magnitude of the intervention and its duration.
The maximum approach of the Government is that it be allowed to limit gas prices until the end of the year.
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