Member States’ ambassadors to the European Union (Coreper) expressed broad support for the French Presidency’s draft compromise on the proposed EU gas storage regulation on Wednesday 27 April, EUROPE reported.
Despite the persistence of some disagreements on certain points of the 22 April text (see EUROPE 12938/2), the French Presidency would like to reach an agreement next week or the week after, in order to be able to start inter-institutional negotiations with the European Parliament, which adopted its negotiating position on 7 April (see EUROPE 12928/10).
The French authorities have asked delegations to send their comments in writing by Thursday evening.
Ensuring a fair distribution of effort
Presented by the European Commission on 23 March in order to prepare the EU for possible disruptions to its gas supply as a result of the war in Ukraine, the proposed regulation would require EU countries to ensure that underground gas storage facilities on their territory are filled to at least 80% of their capacity by 1 November 2022, and then to 90% for the following years, through filling trajectories (see EUROPE 12917/7).
According to our information, the parts of the French draft compromise that need to be fine-tuned particularly concern the article on the target and filling trajectories, as well as the one on effort sharing (between countries with and without underground storage capacity).
In a joint position paper published on Twitter, Spain and Portugal, for example, are championing recognition of the “specific characteristics of the Iberian Peninsula”.
In particular, both countries want the text to put the role of liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities and stocks in security of gas supply on an equal footing with that of underground gas reserves.
In their view, the underground reserve filling target for Portugal and Spain should remain at 80% of storage capacity after 2022, while allowing them to reach 90% by accounting for their LNG stocks.
On this point, the French Presidency’s draft compromise proposes that the objective of filling the reserves can be partially achieved by counting the LNG stored in Member States’ facilities, provided that at least one of the three conditions specified in the text is met (see EUROPE 12938/2).
Paris also suggests deleting the annex to the Commission’s initial proposal which gives each Member State mandatory interim targets for filling its gas reserves, with a view to reaching 80% in November 2022 and 90% in subsequent years.
On Wednesday, Coreper reportedly expressed solidarity with Poland and Bulgaria after Russian gas giant Gazprom suspended gas supplies to these countries (see EUROPE 12940/1).
See the document from Spain and Portugal: https://aeur.eu/f/1e1 (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)