Gas agreement between Croatia, Slovenia and three other EU members
ZAGREB, July 30, 2022 – In the event of a real crisis in the supply of Russian gas and emergency situations in the EU, the member states should show solidarity, including by signing bilateral supply contracts, Croatia is currently preparing such an agreement with Slovenia, reports Jutarnji list in Saturday’s issue.
According to the information available to the newspaper, talks on solidarity agreements will also take place with Italy, Hungary and Austria, and they envisage technical, legal and financial agreements.
This mechanism was envisaged by the European Security of Supply Regulation of 2017, but so far only six solidarity agreements have been signed in the EU. The first was signed by Germany and Denmark in December 2020, at the end of 2021 by Germany and Austria, and this year as many as four were signed – between Estonia and Latvia, Lithuania and Latvia, Italy and Slovenia, and Finland and Estonia.
In the meantime, the European Commission has supplemented the regulation with articles that can be directly applied if necessary if there are no bilateral agreements.
The purpose of this is for countries to help each other to ensure gas supply for their protected customers (such as households and hospitals) even in the event of a major crisis.
At the urgent European meeting on energy earlier this week, the Slovenian minister said that Ljubljana definitely wants to conclude an agreement with Croatia on this before the end of the summer, and he sent a similar proposal to Austria.
Following the latest EU agreement to reduce gas consumption by 15% in the period until spring 2023 (savings are currently voluntary, but will become mandatory in the event of an EU emergency), member states must update their existing gas emergency plans by the end of the summer and show how they intend to achieve the reduction target and report to the EC every two months.
As for the members who want joint gas supplies, they will have to show what measures they have taken to reduce domestic demand, the daily writes.
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