Brussels, 23/04/2014 (Agence Europe) - The Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, has argued in favour of greater solidarity in the EU and joint energy contracts with Russia.
In an open letter to the British daily newspaper The Financial Times on 22 April, Tusk calls on the EU to set in place an energy union to negotiate joint gas contracts with Russia. The crisis in Ukraine has clearly demonstrated the need for the EU to pool its energy purchasing in order to reduce its vulnerability to dominant energy providers, such as Russia, which are able to increase prices and reduce supply at will, Tusk explains. “Europe should confront Russia's monopolistic position with a single European body charged with buying its gas. Once this has been achieved, Europe should undertake the lengthier task of breaking up the Russian gas monopoly and restoring free-market competition. True, this will require Europe's governments to take a unified position. But such feats of coordination have been achieved before”, the Polish Prime Minister stresses, referring to the EU's ancestor, the European Coal and Steel Community (ESCS), the banking union recently set in place, and joint purchases of uranium via the atomic energy agency, Euratom. “Whether in coal, steel, uranium, credit or gas, the principal idea of the EU has always been to bring Europe together, deepening our security and establishing fair rules where the free market is lacking. An energy union, too, would be based on solidarity and common economic interests”, he explains.
Tusk proposes a five-stage process. First, Europe should develop a mechanism for jointly negotiating energy contracts with Russia, which would require the member states to disclose the terms of their existing bilateral energy contracts and adopt a model for future contracts, with the involvement of the European Commission.
The member states would then have to subscribe to a solidarity mechanism guaranteeing mutual energy security, in order to prevent a repeat of the 2009 crisis caused by the gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine, when a shortfall in supplies of Russian gas to Ukraine had knock-on effects on Poland and other Eastern European countries. “Europe must be safe in the knowledge that its gas supply is assured, its storage facilities sufficient and its gas networks are uninterrupted”, the Polish Prime Minister states.
Thirdly, transfers of energy between the member states should be improved through the building of adequate energy infrastructure. “Today, at least ten member states depend on a single supplier - Gazprom - for more than half of their consumption. Some are wholly dependent on [Gazprom]. In countries where the security of supply is weakest, storage capacity and gas links should be built with the help of the EU. Such projects should enjoy the highest permitted level of co-financing from Brussels - 75%”, Tusk argues.
Fourthly, the member states should make full use of the fossil fuels available, including coal and shale gas. “No nation should be forced to extract minerals but none should be prevented from doing so - as long as it is done in a sustainable way”, Tusk adds. Lastly, he argues in favour of the adoption of new technologies to increase imports of liquid gas from the United States or Australia.
Tusk is also in favour of extending the Energy Community to the whole of Europe. This Community, which was created in 2005 and of which Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia, Montenegro, Ukraine and Kosovo are members alongside the EU member states, is based on these countries transposing the Community acquis on the single energy market.
“The seed of the EU was planted by a simple vision: common control over - and a common stake in - steel production and coal mining. It is time to strengthen the community in the field of energy. Now that new technologies allow it, and old challenges demand it, we can hardly afford not to”, he concludes. (EH)