EU prepares for winter without Russian gas

In a joint press conference today (Wednesday July 22), President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans and Commissioners Kadri Simson and Thierry Breton, asked member states to cut gas consumption by 15% in order to prepare for a winter without Russian gas.

The 'Save Gas for a Safe Winter' package asks that all 27 member states reduce their gas consumption by 15% from August 1 2022 to March 31 2023.

To achieve that, all member states will have to revise their national emergency energy plans accordingly and report their progress to the commission every other month.

Simson said the EC was "not telling member states which measures they need to take, as they are in the best place to know what works best for their systems and economy" in order to achieve the 15% reduction. Instead, she said that "to help them, we have outlined options".

Power to the Commission

However, in an unprecedented move, EU Commission will have the power to transform this target from voluntary, as is now, to a mandatory obligation for the member states.

That gives a unique and unprecedented power to the European Commission, which no longer has to wait for the various parliaments to vote on it.

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This has been EU's Achilles' heel and it seems like the union is bypassing it this time, and is responding fast and decisively to the issue.

This emergency decision makes sense as it comes only one day after Russian gas giant Gazprom declared that it cannot fulfill its gas contracts with the Union.

Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which delivers more than a third of Russian gas exports to the EU, is down for annual maintenance until tomorrow (Thursday July 21).

But President Vladimir Putin warned that Russian supplies via Nord Stream 1 could be reduced further or even stop.

So far, 12 member states have been hit by reduced gas flows and 2 more - Poland and Bulgaria - have been completely cut off.

Alternative gas suppliers

The 'Save Gas for a Safe Winter' package comes also two days after von der Leyen's visit to Azerbaijan, where she met with President Aliyev and signed a new memorandum of understanding in the field of energy - an MoU which aims to double the capacity of the Southern Gas Corridor and deliver at least 20 billion cubic meters to the EU annually by 2027.

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Other suppliers include Algeria and the United States, However, the fact remains that the gas markets were already strained even before the war in Ukraine thanks mainly to the pandemic.

So the help that the EU will get from these alternative suppliers does not represent a solution, but only a quick fix. A fix, that will give the EU the time to resolve the problem with augmented renewables, nuclear and hydrogen production.

'Russian-engineered' energy crisis

Neither European Commission's package nor Gazprom's declaration come as a surprise. Russia is intensifying its commodities 'war' and it looks like the EU is not biting the bait so far.

The President of the Commission said clearly that this is a Russian attempt to divide the member states and that this energy crisis is "Russian engineered".

Timmermans said during the press conference that "Russia sees gas as a political weapon" and that this crisis is "a political creation by President Putin as part of his efforts to weaken us and to divide us".

Commissioner Breton, digitally present at the press conference, said: “It’s essential that we do everything we can, immediately, to find alternatives to Russia gas, starting with efforts in terms of diversification" as he explained the aim to replace at least half of the stock coming from Russia with alternatives like LNG.

He added: “Today, more than ever, it is necessary to preserve the European solidarity and unity. We’ll leave no one behind and when I say ‘no one’, I obviously mean neither households nor workers nor companies.”

Seems like we have President Putin to thank for this unity and solidarity among the EU member states. What is however certain, is that these are testing times.