Paris will supply gas to Germany, Berlin will supply electricity to France: this is the substance of the agreement on "

Franco-German energy solidarity

" announced today at the Elysée by the President of the French Republic Emmanuel Macron, in a press conference held after a video call with Chancellor Olaf Scholz

Macron explained: "Germany needs our gas and we need the electricity produced in the rest of Europe, and in particular in Germany. We will contribute to European gas solidarity and benefit from European electricity solidarity. We will

finalize the necessary

connections in the coming weeks to be able to supply gas to Germany

if there is a need for solidarity and whenever there will be. As of today, for the first time in a long time, France is an exporter of gas to the rest. Europe. We will strengthen this aspect and we will be able to be in gas solidarity with Germany if the winter is difficult and if they need it ".

"In the same way - continued the French president - Germany has committed itself to an electric solidarity towards France and will put itself in the situation of having more electricity and above all of

providing us, in peak situations, its electric solidarity

. This solidarity Franco-German is the commitment we have made with Chancellor Scholz ".

Macron also announced that

France has reached 92-93% of its gas storage capacity,

guaranteeing the reserves needed to survive the winter "ahead of our expectations".

It is also a significantly

higher level than that reached so far by Italy:

83.5%, according to what Snam communicated today.

Speaking of Italy, the transalpine head of state also said he intends to support a possible proposal by the European Commission aimed at establishing a

ceiling on the price of gas

purchased by Russia

advocated by Prime Minister Mario Draghi, before his resignation, in more than an international summit.

The measure, which will be on the table of the EU energy ministers' summit next Friday, would be "consistent with our sanctioning policy and would reduce prices", observed Macron, who also agreed with Scholtz on the issue of

taxation of extra-profits.

: "The right approach is to ask for a contribution at European level from market operators", which then "could then be passed on to Member States to finance their national measures"

The French president also asked the French to

moderate the use of air conditioning

and, this winter, "

stick to a heating threshold of around 19 degrees

".

Thus, "in a completely spontaneous way, the country will be able to achieve its objectives of

sobriety

", set at 10% less consumption, "and avoid rationing".

German vice-chancellor Robert Habeck

also spoke in the evening

: when asked what impact Gazprom's next moves will have on German energy policy, he replied assuring that "we will solve our problems without having to take Putin's moves into account".

Kremlin: gas pipeline stopped due to sanctions

While

the price of gas has started to fly

again, reaching a peak of 290 euros per megawatt hour in Amsterdam and then closing at 245 euros, Kremlin spokesman

Dmitri Peskov

said the interruption of supplies through the

Nord Stream

pipeline was due to the

"Sanctions that prevent the maintenance of the units

, that prevent their movement without adequate legal guarantees, that prevent these legal guarantees and so on", while Putin, attending a meeting on the socio-economic development of Kamchatka, said that

the production of Gazprom "is not falling, it is only growing".

The EU summit on Friday

Meanwhile, the Czech presidency of the EU Council has released the agenda of the energy summit on Friday: in addition to the discussion on the

price cap

, the hypothesis of

financial support for the most exposed companies

, an "immediate support of the line of credit for market participants experiencing very high margin calls, including the possibility of a specific solution at European level ", as well as"

decoupling and limiting the impact of the gas price on the price of electricity

", the limitation of the extra profits of energy producers, measures to reduce the demand for electricity and the possibility of using the Ets reserve quotas, the emissions trading system.