Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, has positioned herself in favor of agreeing to the reform of the electricity market at the beginning of 2024, prior to the European elections in May, after defending that it is a “mature” proposal that benefits the final consumer of the affordable production of green energies.
The leader of the Community Executive stressed during an interview with Europa Press and a group of agencies from the European Newsroom that the measure defended this Tuesday for a new design of the electricity market reduces the impact of gas on the price of electricity and wants to reduce the bill to the consumerat the same time that a greater investment in renewable energies is committed.
“We see that we have a spot market that works well, but we have to improve on long-term contracts,” he pointed out, referring to the new types of contracts contemplated by the Brussels initiative. “At the center of this reform are consumers, and the main objective of this reform is to bring consumers closer to the benefits of renewable energy Low cost“, has added.
In Von der Leyen’s opinion, the initiative to reform the electricity market is “well thought out and very mature”, which is why he has asked to “work hard” to close it before the European elections in May 2024, thus setting a calendar for the Twenty-seven come to an agreement. The goal of the reform is increase the presence of renewables to the detriment of fossil fuels and facilitate long-term contracts to reduce price volatility to protect consumers, as Spain already defended in the proposal it presented to the Commission last January.
Faced with the structural reform proposal defended by countries like Spain, another bloc of seven countries led by Germany claims that the review of the electricity market be “limited” and that it maintain the benefits reported by the system in the last decade and without compromising the goals climatic. For this reason, a lengthy debate at the level of the Twenty-seven is predicted. In any case, the deadlines defended by Von der Leyen coincide with those proposed by Spain, which trusts that the reform can be closed before the end of the current legislature.
European self-sufficiency in new technologies
On the proposal for a zero emission industry, another regulation that seeks to prevent business migration from Europe and achieve European self-sufficiency in the production of new technologies, the president of the European Commission has denied that the initiative has a protectionist desire despite responding to the plans of China and the United States, which seek to stand out with millionaire ‘doping’ of their companies.
“It is a very open regulation, of course, by complying with our regulations everyone can access the market. It is our decision to invest in the zero emission industry and facilitate the development of new clean technologies“, he stated. In this sense, he stressed that the main points of the law are to reduce the bureaucratic burden or the deadlines in the permit granting processes, “but there is no point that is protectionist, on the contrary, it is a law very open”, reiterated the head of the Community Executive.
All in all, Von der Leyen has defended that with the measures to make State aid more flexible or the law on critical raw materials to diversify EU imports of strategic raw materials, Brussels presents a package of industrial measures that show that ” you can cut emissions and have a growth strategy”. “Now we see globally that there is a lot of momentum for the cleantech industry and we want to stay on the front line“, he summarized.
