The various Member States of the European Union (EU) are each negotiating on their own, with the same partners, to counterbalance the fall in Russian gas supplies.
Emmanuel Macron’s trip to Algeria from Thursday, August 25 to Saturday, August 27, 2022, is officially to strengthen relations between Paris and Algiers. But negotiations to obtain more gas will also be on the menu.
Especially with Russia steadily reducing gas deliveries, or cutting it outright in the name of maintenance issues, as was the case in July and again from August 31 to September 2 for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
France is not the first country in recent months to try to obtain more gas from its Algerian partner. Mario Draghi came to sign a new contract in July for 4 billion m³ of additional gas for Italy when he was plunged into a political crisis that would bring down his government.
Spain also negotiated Algerian gas a few weeks before. Other European countries have chosen alliances with different partners, such as Norway and the United States.
This European inability to coordinate is logical in the current functioning of the European Union. The choice of the energy mix falls within the competence of the States and the situations are very different. For example, that of the three Baltic countries combined is equivalent to less than 10% of French consumption of this fossil fuel.
Negotiations that put Europe in a weak position
This choice to negotiate in dispersed order has negative consequences for EU Member States. In the case of Algeria, the producing country is in a position of strength to impose its conditions, such as the gestures of Madrid this year in favor of the separatists of Western Sahara .
This position aroused the fury of Morocco which saw its relations become strained with Spain. However, Algeria would not be in a position of strength if its government had to negotiate with a single European interlocutor. The EU has a de facto monopoly on Algerian exports, recalls Thomas Pellerin-Carlin, an energy expert from the Jacques Delors Institute.
Another consequence of this nationalization of the negotiations, certain countries cannot discuss with other gas suppliers for reasons of simple geography. Hungary’s controversial Prime Minister Viktor Orban went to ask for more gas directly from Moscow, shattering European unity in the face of Putin. The same goes for Bulgaria, whose new interim government is tempted to negotiate with Gazprom for an extension in Russian deliveries before its legislative elections on October 2.
Germany has just signed a new agreement on Tuesday night with Canada for deliveries which will however only take place around 2025. A good way for Justin Trudeau’s government to find a new reliable partner who will finance its new infrastructure with two terminals under construction on the west coast of the country for LNG and hydrogen, even if the technical feasibility of transport by boat for this latter energy is still being tested.
Create a joint gas purchasing center
Other states have made strategic choices for several years to get out of their dependence on Russian gas. In May, Poland inaugurated the GIPL gas pipeline, launched in 2020 and interconnecting Poland and Lithuania with other European gas pipelines.
It could even link Latvia, Estonia, and Finland in the future. In 2016, Warsaw also built a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal at the port of Swinoujscie, in the west of the country. Lithuania had done the same with a floating terminal in the port of Klaipeda. His name was already quite a symbol: independence.
However, the European States had been able to find the means not to be divided at the height of the Covid-19 crisis by going to negotiate vaccines against Covid-19 together in 2020. This had made it possible in particular to ensure that each European country enough and the cost of purchase is reduced.
The Jacques Delors Institute has been advocating for the creation of a common gas purchasing center at the European level for just over ten years, recalls Thomas Pellerin-Carlin. For another source of energy, such as uranium, there is a European central purchasing office, via Euratom. As a result, we have stocks and there is no supply problem, he explains. The best way to defend the national interest is to act at the European level on this subject, believes the energy expert.
