Statement by President von der Leyen on the ‘Save gas for a safe winter' Package. Snižme spotřebu o 15% během zimní sezóny

We want to debrief together, from this College meeting, on the decisions we have taken, mostly the focus on gas demand. We know that today the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is at day 147. But if we look in hindsight, we see that, months before the war broke out, Russia kept gas supply intentionally as low as possible, despite the high gas prices – we have discussed it here in this room many times. We have seen that Gazprom had not the slightest interest to rebalance the market. On the contrary, it kept its storage levels as low as possible, and the supplies too, and therefore reducing the supply, tightening the market and driving up the prices.

What do we see today? Today, we have 12 Member States that are hit by a partial or total cut-off of Russian gas supply. And overall, the flow of Russian gas is now less than one-third of what it used to be, for example, at the same time last year. Russia is blackmailing us. Russia is using energy as a weapon. Therefore, in any event, whether it is a partial or a major cut-off of Russian gas, or a total cut-off of Russian gas, Europe needs to be ready. We do not start from scratch and that is good – we have already done a lot to reduce our dependency on Russian fossil fuels overall. We have set up a joint gas storage. The storages are now filled at 64%. We set up an EU Energy Platform for joint purchase. We have proposed our REPowerEU plan. And you know that it is two pillars: The first one is on supply; increase the supply from other trustworthy sources than the Russian one. And the second pillar is on reducing the demand on gas overall.

On the first pillar: The gas supply from other sources than Russia have quite impressively increased since January this year by 35 bcm by now. You remember that we had the US agreement on increased supplies on LNG. Norway stepped up considerably. Qatar, the Gulf States, Algeria. I was with Kadri [Simson] in Egypt to sign a MoU on more supplies. We were two days ago in Azerbaijan to sign a MoU on increased supplies.

And we have worked a lot on increased supplies through renewable energy. This is the energy of the future; this is the energy we need. Besides the fact that it is clean energy, it is home-grown and makes us independent. And there, we have also good news. Because since the beginning of this year, we have an estimated additional 20 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity. If you put that as an equivalent to gas, it is round about 4 bcm replaced by renewables by now.

Today, we want to focus on the demand side, the energy saving. And here too, we do not start from scratch. The Member States are already doing a lot. What is the state of play right now? We have right now 11 Member States that have triggered an early warning, what their gas supply is concerned, and one Member State has even triggered an alert. But we also know that we have to prepare for more, the preparation is not enough. We have to address – and this is for the first time – our energy security at a European level. We have to be proactive; we have to prepare for a potential full disruption of Russian gas. This is a likely scenario, with what we have seen in the past. As we know, Russia is calculatingly trying to put pressure on us by reducing the supply of gas. So it is a likely scenario that there is a full cut-off of Russian gas. And that would hit the whole European Union. A gas crisis in the EU's Single Market – our economic powerhouse – will affect every single Member State in our European Union.

Now, we have learnt our lesson from the pandemic. We know that in such a crisis, our worst enemy is fragmentation. And if we act in unity, we can address any crisis. We are much, much stronger than the sum of 27 Member States only. And we know that a lot is at stake: the well-being of our citizens, the jobs, our economy. So if we can act in unity, we can master the difficulties. What is the proposal? To make it through the winter, assuming that there is a full disruption of Russian gas, we need to save gas to fill our gas storages faster. And to do so, we have to reduce our gas consumption. I know that this is a big ask for the whole of the European Union, but it is necessary to protect us.

This is why today we propose an emergency instrument on the basis of Article 122. We have two objectives. One is: Every Member State should reduce the use of gas. And our second objective is: We provide a safety net for all Member States. On the reduction of gas use: In case that we have a situation that deteriorates, like a full disruption of Russian gas, we trigger an EU alert overall for the European Union. We are asking the Member States to reduce the gas consumption by 15%. Why 15%? This is the equivalent of 45 bcm of gas. With such a reduction, we can make it safely through this winter in case of a complete disruption of Russian gas. This is calculated under certain assumptions. But this would bring us, if we save 15% to the storage, safely through the winter. And the motto is: The quicker we act, the more we save, the safer we are.

On our second objective, solidarity. There are some Member States that are more directly exposed than others to Russian gas, and they are, of course, more vulnerable than others to disruption. But all Member States will suffer the consequences of such a disruption through the Single Market. So this is why it is important that all Member States now contribute in the saving, the storing and are ready to share gas with the other neighbours in case of need. Energy solidarity is a core principle of our Treaty. We already have the Security of Supply Regulation that foresees that Member States can count on each other. And we are building on that the emergency instrument that we present today.

I know that these are testing times. But we also know, by experience now and with the crisis that we have gone through, that testing times require that we are well organised, well coordinated on a European level, that we show strong unity and that we show solidarity. These are the three ingredients that make us strong and make it possible to go through any kind of crisis. We have managed the pandemic; we have managed the vaccination in that way; we have managed to create NextGenerationEU. We have used this unity, this European coordination and this solidarity when facing Russia's war. We have gone through applying six packages of sanctions. The seventh is underway. So if we look at the European Union today, I am confident that we can master this Russian-engineered energy crisis by staying together.

Thank you.