The Government now says that it will approve the gas intervention on Friday and blames the delay on Portugal

The Government undertakes to approve this same Friday in the extraordinary

the mechanism to intervene in the price of gas and achieve a reduction in the domestic electricity bill of close to 30%.

After receiving a preliminary approval from the European Commission, the Executive now attributes the new delay to the coordination with

, although the Portuguese Prime Minister,

, announced yesterday that the neighboring country would approve it today.

"We are working intensely with them, we have the entire mechanism defined. We have accommodated different adjustments with the requests of the Commission and we are waiting for the decisions of both governments to coincide and approve it in parallel", the Government spokesperson,

at the press conference after the Council of Ministers on Tuesday.

The approval of this "urgent" mechanism according to the Government to make electricity cheaper, if it finally occurs on Friday, would come

Pedro Sánchez and the Portuguese Prime Minister, Antonio Costa, boasted of achieving a great political agreement in Brussels to to be able to take its own measures pointing to the Iberian exceptionality of "energy island".

In between, there have been many technical scuffles between the two countries and the European Commission itself, which have led to important changes in the wording of the first drafts.

The electricity companies have harshly charged against the measure directly in Brussels and have obtained the support of banks and financial market operators due to the impact that the intervention will have on the term markets.

Although Spain has indirectly pointed to the coordination with Portugal as the reason for the delays, the truth is that Costa announced yesterday that his cabinet would hold an extraordinary meeting this Tuesday to give the green light to the measure.

However, this announcement came a few hours before the European Commission reminded itself, as EL MUNDO published in its digital version, that it was a preliminary approval that still needed to resolve some technical issues.

The leaks of information and these announcements made in an uncoordinated manner have further opened up the technical gaps that already existed between the two countries due to the drafting of the standard.

The vice president of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, has asked her partners to keep the negotiations extremely confidential in the face of the continuous delays in the negotiation that are causing the leaks of documentation.

The truth is that Brussels still sees unresolved "technical issues" that mainly affect the Spanish part of the plan and that have to do with the "overlapping" of cuts to electricity companies and the effect of the coal subsidy on the electricity market.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more