Following Russia’s decision to reduce gas supply, twelve countries in the European Union have expressed outrage.
This was stated on Thursday by the head of EU climate policy Frans Timmermans, who accused Moscow of turning energy into a weapon.
“Russia has weaponized energy, and we have seen further gas disruptions announced in recent days. All this is part of Russia’s strategy to undermine our unity,” Timmermans said in the European Parliament, according to CNN.
He continued by saying that ten member states had issued early warnings about this in accordance with the gas security of supply regulation, and that as a result, twelve member states are currently impacted by Russian unilateral supply cuts.
“The risk of full gas disruption is now more real than ever before,” he stressed, adding “this is why it is important to adopt gas storage regulation alongside other measures of preparedness.”
The twelve EU countries that are partially or totally affected are Lithuania, Bulgaria, Poland, Germany, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Germany has just announced, and informed the EU Commission, that it is moving to step 2 of the EU SoS regulation, the “alert” level, an EU Commission spokesperson told CNN.
The “early warning” is the lowest level of crisis notification under the bloc’s Gas Security of Supply Regulation, accelerating the monitoring and information exchange requirements in the member State concerned.
According to this regulation, the natural gas undertakings concerned shall make technical information available, on a daily basis, to the competent authority of the member State.
Discussion about this post