(Finance) – Despite the energy price crisis, energy solidarity between EU countries is struggling to assert itself. And if the EU wants to be fully prepared to face a new gas crisis there is still a lot to do. This is the warning that comes from the last one report of the Court of Auditors of the EU. At the center of the report is Union response to the gas supply crisis driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In detail – we read in the report – of the 40 possible solidarity agreements on gas supplies that the EU estimates as “necessary” for collective security, only 9 have been signed so far. In this scenario, the EU Court of Auditors has identified the “greater dependence on liquefied natural gas and the need to decarbonise part of its gas consumption” as main challenges that the continent will have to face. The Luxembourg auditors warn that many member states “are still reluctant to sign bilateral solidarity agreements” and that “some EU countries would even cut off gas supplies to a neighboring country in an emergency.”
In case of “serious gas supply emergencies”, EU states can enter into bilateral or trilateral agreements with neighboring countries which should supply gas on demand to meet that demand. At the end of 2018, according to the Luxembourg auditors, no bilateral agreement had been signed in the EU, while today the report counts 8 in total, with the data updated to 2023: between Germany and Denmark (signed in 2020); between Germany and Austria (2021); between Estonia and Latvia (2022); Lithuania and Latvia (2022); Italy and Slovenia (2022); Finland and Estonia (2022); Denmark and Sweden (2023); Slovenia and Croatia (2023). The ninth and last in order of time – which the report does not include in the list because it was signed in March – is the one signed between Germany, Italy and Switzerland. The fact is that not even the crisis that erupted after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 contributed to a significant increase in the number of bilateral agreements.
Looking to the future, the Court concludes that the EU must consolidate the framework for the economic accessibility of gas. The Luxembourg auditors retrace the measures implemented by the EU Commission to counter the price crisis, and confirm that at the end of 2023 the EU had managed to diversify its gas supply sources by abandoning Russian gas while prices had stabilized , reaching pre-crisis levels in early 2024. They also argue that they cannot establish the “added value” on gas price stability provided by the joint gas purchasing platform given that the “peak” of prices had already reduced when it entered into operation.
(Photo: © Iaroslav Danylchenko /123RF)