The President of the European Parliament regrets the absence of an energy union in the EU
The President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metzolahas underlined the importance of “dismantling Europe’s energy dependency on Russia as much as possible” as a “final strategy” to deal with the energy crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and has forcefully warned of one of the main causes of the current situation in the block: “To have lacked an energetic union for too long.”
In an interview granted to Europa Press on the occasion of his visit to Santander this Tuesday, where he will attend the Global Youth Leadership Forum together with King Felipe VI, Maltese politics has stressed the importance of forge this “union”, an issue that now emerges as a priority to stop the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, before the advance of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine. “For me this is the first thing we should do. The second thing is to continue helping Ukraine. If we don’t, Putin won’t stop. He said that he would take Ukraine in three days, that Finland and Sweden would never join NATO, and look what we have achieved,” he asserted before clarifying that there is a need to “fight against the autocracy and all those who seek to destroy us.” For this reason, he explained, “we must help Ukraine and guarantee that we follow the path of energy independence”, an issue in which countries such as Spain and Portugal have served as a “shining example”.
“The Iberian Peninsula has led in renewable energies, they have managed to sell and buy energy from friendly countries. Others cannot say the same,” he pointed out. However, she has admitted that “nothing is easy” and has recalled that some countries, at the beginning of the invasion last February, “depended on Russian gas 100%”. “Now I look at Moldova, for example, and I see that it is a country that we have to help more. We have identified new sources of energy, we have created alliances and found other partners in other parts of the world”, he stressed before stating that ” We are in the good way”.
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With his trip to Spain, he has declared, he hopes to meet with young people in whom he can instill a political feeling in the face of electoral processes. “I ask you to look at Europe, to see where it has taken us.”he continued, but not before stressing that “all the eyes of the EU will be on Spain when it assumes the rotating presidency” of the European Council in 2023.
Before him advance of the extreme right in the heart of the EU, an issue that has occupied the MEPs during a debate held on Wednesday in Strasbourg, has asked the twenty-seven to “focus on the needs of the citizen” to avoid “falling into fragmentation” and endangering “all the progress made”, especially in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine. In this sense, he has warned that there is a “generalized social discontent, understandable concerns of citizens who ask us how to pay the bills.” “It is our responsibility as elected politicians, we have to guarantee that these doubts are transmitted and that measures are taken in this regard,” he added.