Against the will of some member countries, the European Union (EU) approved this Tuesday (26) the establishment of a voluntary target of 15% reduction in gas use between the months of August and March, in yet another effort to reduce dependence on the product imported from Russia.
The measure, recommended last week by the European bloc’s Executive, comes a day after Russian state giant Gazprom announced a further reduction in gas supply through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. .
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, described the deal as creating a solid foundation to respond to what she calls the energy blackmail of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. “Gazprom’s announcement further illustrates Russia’s unreliable nature as an energy supplier,” the German said in a statement.
The block’s main objective would be to help fill gas storage stockpiles before winter hits the Northern Hemisphere, anticipating the possibility of making cuts mandatory should a supply emergency be declared in the region.
The measure, however, would present exceptions. Ireland and Malta would be exempt from mandatory cuts as they are not connected to the gas networks of other EU countries. Hungary was the only country that opposed the agreement, but there was also criticism from Spain.
Madrid, however, could request a lower reduction target, as it is not dependent on Russian gas and has limited capacity to export gas to other countries due to low infrastructure capacity.
Robert Habeck, economy minister of Germany, which has had to reopen coal plants to deal with dwindling gas supplies, said the deal would show Putin that Europe remained united. “You will not separate us,” he said, in a message addressed to the Russian.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky called Russian actions a “gas war” during a speech on Monday. “All this is done by Russia deliberately to make it as difficult as possible for Europeans to prepare for winter,” he said.
“Europe’s gas blackmail, which only gets worse every month, is necessary for a terrorist state to make the lives of all Europeans worse,” followed Zelensky, who took the opportunity to call for an eighth package of economic sanctions against Moscow to be applied by the EU — the last one, enacted last week, aimed at the embargo on Russian gold.
Moscow alleges that the further reduction in supply is due to maintenance problems in some turbines on the Nord Stream pipeline and that restrictions applied by the West exacerbate the situation.
The imbroglio took on a character of a turbine that had been sent for maintenance in Canada, but could not return, according to the Kremlin, due to customs barriers imposed by sanctions. Concerned about supply, Germany acted to speed up shipping. The structure, however, has not yet arrived in Russia.
