The president of the Government, Pedro Sanchez, complained on Tuesday of the “lack of political will” of its European partners to advance in energy interconnections and intervene in the electricity market to stop the rise in electricity. During his participation in the Davos Economic Forum, in a round table on energy security, Sánchez asked to address such challenges without delay and addressed a direct question to the Vice President of the European Commission for the Green Deal, Frans Timmermanns, on the advisability of a profound reform of the electricity market in the European Union. The commissioner replied that “step by step”: “It is evident that there are possible improvements in the price system, but it cannot be changed from one day to the next and it must be done very carefully so as not to cause serious damage.”
“It makes no sense to continue paying such exorbitant prices for gas that they end up poisoning the electricity market and the electricity bill,” replied the president before returning to show himself in favor of intervening in the market: “I cannot understand why in Europe we are willing to intervene the financial system if something does not work, but we are incapable of intervening in the energy market when it is clear that there are problems».
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Urgency for the reform of the electricity sector requested Pedro Sánchez in his speech and urgency and a stable framework for the transition to renewable energies is what the president of Iberdrola also called for, Ignacio Sanchez Galan, in another energy debate panel at the Davos Forum. A regular at this annual event in the small Swiss town for more than 15 years, Sánchez Galán warned that “measures that slow down the transition to clean energy will have very significant costs”. In countries like Spain they could be equivalent to almost 8% of GDP, he said.
In another event on the sidelines of his participation in the Davos Forum, Pedro Sánchez presented the regasification and gas storage capacity of Spain and Southern Europe in general as an opportunity for the European Union (EU) to reduce its energy dependence on Russia. Hence, Sánchez’s insistence on the need to increase interconnections between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of the European market. “Spain, the Iberian Peninsula and, he would say, southern Europe, will have the opportunity to provide an answer to this energy dependence on fossil energy from Russia,” he said during an interview with the US network CNBC, in Davos.