Dhe European Union is preparing for a possible gas crisis in Europe. On Wednesday afternoon, the EU Commission wants to present an emergency plan in Brussels on how to react to failures in gas supplies. Drafts of the plan were already circulating on Wednesday morning.
According to this, the Commission wants to make binding savings targets for the member states in an emergency – values between 5 and 15 percent are under discussion. An obligation to heat buildings to just 19 degrees is also under discussion. An overview of the possible consequences of the emergency plan:
consequences for consumers
Drafts of the plan envisage, among other things, that public buildings, offices and commercial buildings should be heated to a maximum of 19 degrees and cooled down to no less than 25 degrees with air conditioning, provided that this is technically possible. In general, consumers, like other gas consumers, are called upon to save.
In the event of a gas emergency, there are already basic rules in the EU, which are anchored in the so-called SOS regulation. This regulates, for example, which customers should still be supplied with gas in an emergency. Households and essential social services are given special treatment as protected consumers. They enjoy a special status and can be given priority by the member countries.
Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) had already made it clear that in the event of a gas shortage, all consumers would have to make contributions to save energy. Exactly how this will be implemented is not yet clear.
consequences for companies
The Commission’s draft stipulates that companies should already reduce their gas consumption or switch to other energy sources. Companies could receive financial incentives for this.
According to the currently applicable EU rules, industry is generally no better protected than consumers in an emergency. This means that their supply would be stopped in the worst case. In theory, German industry would have to sell gas to households in a neighboring country like Austria if the country cannot supply itself in any other way and Germany also has no other supplies.
Conversely, German households would be supplied by the industry of neighboring countries if the worst came to the worst. This would be the very last resort and would probably only occur if gas became scarce in several countries at the same time. The exact modalities would then have to be worked out.
There are already member states that do not want to follow the rules. Last week, Hungary declared a state of emergency and announced that it would no longer supply gas and other energy sources to other EU countries from August. The EU Commission is currently examining this step.
Consequences for EU countries
According to a draft of the new emergency plan, if voluntary measures are no longer sufficient, it should be possible to set mandatory savings targets in order to ensure that private households and other consumers who require special protection, such as hospitals, are supplied with electricity in all EU countries.
According to the draft, a prerequisite for the introduction of mandatory savings targets could be that at least two EU countries fear acute emergencies due to an undersupply of gas. The draft plan initially leaves open how much the EU countries would have to reduce their gas consumption, but figures of 5 to 15 percent were recently discussed.
