Sanchez and Costa to meet with Scholz in Berlin on Friday, one week ahead of EU leaders’ energy summit

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Prime Minister of Portugal, António Costa, will meet next Friday with the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, a week before the summit of EU leaders in Brussels to decide on intervention measures in the energy market in the framework of which is studied to extend the “Iberian exception” to the rest of the EU and Spain and Portugal claim to recover the Midcat gas pipeline project despite France’s reservations.

The meeting will take place in the Chancellery from 18:30 hours, according to the official agenda of the President of the Government, and will coincide with the Congress of the European Socialist Party that brings together in the German capital the European leaders of social democracy on Friday and Saturday.

The appointment, moreover, comes a week before the heads of state and government of the European Union meet in Brussels for the European Council on October 20 and 21, a summit at which the leaders hope to examine a “clear” proposal from the European Commission with measures to intervene in the energy market.

A week ago, in Prague, European leaders charged Brussels with a package of measures ahead of next week’s summit and the Community Executive has already said it will put together its proposal on four axes: incentivizing the reduction of energy demand, intervening on gas prices, guaranteeing solidarity between Member States and facilitating joint gas purchases.

Then, Sanchez and French President Emmanuel Macron also announced an upcoming trilateral meeting with Costa to seek solutions to the pulse over the MidCat pipeline to interconnect the Iberian peninsula with the rest of the EU through the Pyrenees.

Madrid claims with the support of Berlin to rescue this project to contribute to the necessary diversification of the EU after the rupture with Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, but Paris resists because it considers that it is not the necessary response, although after the last summit Macron qualified his position by trusting to find “pragmatic” solutions.

The announced three-way meeting of Sanchez, Macron and Costa does not yet have a date on the calendar although it was considered to be these days in Paris, but in any case the three leaders will have the opportunity to see each other at the European Council next week.