The European Union takes out the checkbook to help member states accelerate the energy transition, a political objective that precedes the war in Ukraine but that the general rise in prices derived from geopolitical tensions has made it a priority. The Ministers of Economy and Finance of the Twenty-seven have agreed today in Luxembourg the distribution of the 20,000 million euros provided for in the Repower EU plan proposed by the European Commission to accelerate green investments, of which 2,586 million euros have been allocated to Spain.
The funds will be delivered in the form of aid to accelerate the expansion of renewable technologies and reduce energy consumption, almost 13% of the community fund and are added to those that Spain already has assigned within the Recovery and Resilience Plan launched by the EU in response to the pandemic. Italy and Poland, with 2,760 million euros each, are the countries that will receive the most aid from the plan, around 13.8% of the total each. “Repower EU will help Europe get rid of its dependence on Russian gas as soon as possible”, celebrated the Czech Finance Minister, Zbyněk Stanjura, who chaired the Ecofin meeting held today in Luxembourg.
The distribution of funds by country has been based on criteria such as GDP and, as a novelty, also on the percentage of fossil fuels that each one has in its energy mix. The governments have revised some details about the financing of the plan with respect to the original proposal and it will finally receive 75% of the 20,000 million euros from the Innovation Fund and 25% of the profits from the advance sales of CO2 emission rights. Negotiations with the European Parliament will start shortly. The goal of the Czech presidency is to complete the legislative process by the end of this year.
The Spanish Government has celebrated that Ecofin has been able to reach a consensus today on the European plan, which it considers will give "an additional boost" to the EU's disconnection from Russia and the objective of improving its energy security. "The agreement shows that, at a European level, there is consensus that Spain can contribute to accelerating the energy transition and reinforcing Europe's energy security," sources from the Ministry of the Economy point out.
"Repower EU will help countries meet their infrastructure needs to reduce their dependence" on fossil fuels, said the Vice President of the European Commission, Valdis Dombrovskis. This is only "part of the problem", has admitted the commissioner of Latvian origin, who has advocated seeking "other sources of financing" to support governments for their policies to support the most vulnerable households, an objective that Brussels sets finance with a limited issue of common debt as was done during the pandemic.
