Spain does not want to support the EU’s gas emergency plan. This was announced by Spanish Energy Minister Teresa Ribera on Wednesday. According to Ribera, the EU proposal came about without properly involving the countries.

Shortly after the EU unveiled the gas emergency plan, Energy Minister Teresa Ribera said Spain would not support the proposal. This is reported by the news agency Reuters.

Accordingly, Spain, which is independent of Russian gas, would reject the EU’s proposal. The reason: the countries were not consulted. The EU regulation must be approved by a strong majority of EU countries. On Friday, the diplomats plan to meet and discuss with a view to approving the proposal at an emergency meeting of energy ministers on July 26.

“I deeply regret to say that Spain does not support this proposal,” Ribera said at a meeting in Madrid. “We believe that the proposal was drawn up without prior general debate in the European Council. Even if the economic consequences are particularly important – nobody can demand sacrifices without first having obtained an opinion,” said Ribera.

Background: In the event of a gas emergency, EU states should be able to be forced to save gas according to the will of the European Commission. Specifically, the Brussels authority proposed on Wednesday that binding reduction targets should be possible if not enough is saved voluntarily. First of all, the EU countries should voluntarily do everything they can to reduce their consumption in the coming months by 15 percent compared to the average of the past five years.

The federal government actually wanted to prescribe from 2024 that only heating systems that are operated with 65 percent renewable energies should be installed. That would have meant that the heat pump would have become mandatory in most cases. Gas heaters would have been banned. But the federal government is now moving away from this plan.

Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck should consider a climate tax for newly registered combustion cars and a higher tax on company cars. This emerges from a strategy paper by the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Employees in this country can only dream of it: Simply cushion inflation with an automatic salary increase. This is exactly the case for EU employees. At least 8.5 percent more wages are waiting for them. But they are now receiving fierce criticism from economic experts.