Brussels, 06/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - The issue of the joint purchasing of gas raised much interest at a hearing devoted to energy security, at the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday 5 November.
The joint purchase of gas is a key plank of the proposed EU energy union, as put forward by its pioneers, former Commission president Jacques Delors (France) and former European Parliament president Jerzy Buzek (Poland), and also more recently by former Polish prime minister and soon to be European Council president Donald Tusk.
On Wednesday, several MEPs, in the debate chaired by head of the industry committee, Jerzy Buzek (EPP), discussed whether or not this would be the best option. The new energy union commissioner, Maros Sefcovic (Slovakia) and his colleague at energy and climate, Miguel Arias Cañete (Spain), have promised to look at it closely during their five-year term of office.
In its energy security strategy, proposed in May (see EUROPE 11090), the Commission considers the issue and the preferred approach could be a voluntary arrangement among member states rather than something that is legally binding.
Claude Turmes (Greens/EFA, Luxembourg), for example, expressed reservations at the idea of jointly purchasing gas, pointing out that creation of an EU purchasing cartel could encourage non-EU supplier countries to form a supply cartel.
When asked to give his view on the matter, the special envoy for energy security of the Czech Foreign Ministry, Vaclav Bartuska, expressed scepticism. He sees completion of the energy internal market as a more feasible option than setting up a joint gas purchasing agency as a way of increasing the bargaining power of the member states of the EU with their suppliers. “If we create a joint European integrated energy market, then no supplier can play one against another or try to blackmail a country. I am not sure that we can create a body that can buy gas for all the European companies”, he said.
He pointed out that European countries currently pay widely varying prices for Russian gas, depending on their access to other sources of gas. France, for example, pays half as much as Latvia, which has no alternative supplier, while the Czech Republic buys its Russian gas at a much lower price than its neighbour Slovakia, he highlighted. He also noted that the EU's alternative gas supply options had shrunk after recent global events, such as the crises in North Africa, and in Iraq and Syria.
Bartuska, who conducted negotiations on behalf of the Czech Presidency with Russia and Ukraine during the 2009 gas crisis, was not particularly hopeful about the sustainability of the winter 2014-2015 package concluded, under Commission mediation, between Kiev and Moscow on 31 October (see EUROPE 11189). (EH)