Ribera reiterates the need for the EU to discuss MidCat

By: News Team

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The Third Vice President of the Government and Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, reiterated this Tuesday that the European Union (EU) must discuss the launch of the MidCat gas pipeline, despite the rejection of France and the lukewarm response from the European Commission (EC).

Ribera, who first thing in the morning stated in an interview on the Onda Cero program “Mas de Uno” that the debate on MidCat is not a strictly bilateral issue between Spain and France, has returned to the matter at the conference press after the Council of Ministers.

The minister has referred to this shortly after the EC has avoided openly supporting the construction of the MidCat gas pipeline, which Spain and Germany defend but France rejects, and has indicated that its future depends on the discussions between the “involved” countries.

“It is pertinent to have a debate and think about infrastructures that are useful for the future and can carry hydrogen”, explained Teresa Ribera, referring to future uses that can be given to the infrastructure in the long term, and not only as a means to alleviate Europe’s energy difficulties as a result of the war in Ukraine.

This “open” debate must prepare Europe and, above all, the most vulnerable member states “not only to deal with this winter, which will be hard, but also to deal with the next one”, explained Ribera, who assured that “now we are well in gas reserves, but for next winter we’ll see what happens”.

On the rejection of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, to the MidCat project, he reiterated that “it is pertinent to have a debate on what the defense of the Continent represents with interconnections, with infrastructures that serve the future and in which it is possible to transport hydrogen and be operational for a long time.

The extraordinary meeting of European energy ministers scheduled for next Friday will allow “an exchange of proposals and views” on the energy crisis, such as what are the best solutions to decouple the price of gas from that of electricity or how to intervene in the market electricity, the minister has advanced.

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