The EU gas emergency plan has been in force since Tuesday. It stipulates that the member states of the community should reduce their gas consumption by 15 percent by next March. The catch: First of all, it is a voluntary agreement – at least until a “Union alarm” is triggered. In the event that the supply situation worsens, for example in the event of a complete Russian supply stop, the savings targets should then become binding.
However, because the principle of voluntariness prevails for the time being, the federal government is now relying on bilateral agreements with other EU countries, with the help of which mutual gas supplies are to be secured. Berlin relies on the so-called solidarity mechanism: According to the European gas regulation, individual member states should give gas to neighboring countries in an emergency. This is intended to ensure the supply of vulnerable customers – such as private customers – in directly neighboring member states in an emergency.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) had already declared at a meeting with his counterparts in Luxembourg in June that Germany was ready to support neighboring countries such as the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland and France with gas supplies – and vice versa. Habeck would like to conclude corresponding solidarity agreements with as many EU member states as possible.
So far, however, the Green politician has not gotten very far. Germany has already concluded solidarity agreements with Denmark and Austria, while “very concrete talks” are being held with the Czech Republic, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Economic Affairs told the Tagesspiegel. Otherwise talks would be held with other countries such as Italy or Poland.
However, the federal government’s negotiations with Poland in particular are likely to prove difficult. On the one hand, this is due to the general political climate in Poland and, on the other hand, to the mistakes in German energy policy in the past. As far as the current political mood in Warsaw is concerned, the national-conservative PiS government is increasingly on a course for conflict with the EU.
When Habeck and the other energy ministers of the community reached the agreement on voluntary gas savings last month, the Polish climate minister, Anna Moskwa, was only half-hearted. After the meeting of EU energy ministers in Brussels, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki again questioned the decisions that had been made. Morawiecki no longer wants to know that in the event of an extreme EU-wide gas shortage, the voluntary option to save energy can also become an obligation.
Negotiations on a bilateral solidarity agreement between Berlin and Warsaw are also being made more difficult by the fact that the government in Warsaw has recently continued to accuse the federal government of its energy policy failures. While Germany is still dependent on deliveries from the state-owned company Gazprom, Poland has used the past few years to end its dependency on Russia – for example with the “Baltic Pipe” gas pipeline to Norway. Against this background, the Secretary General of the national-conservative governing party PiS, Krzysztof Sobolewski, recently demanded that the federal government first apologize for having always presented the Baltic Sea pipeline Nord Stream 1 and 2 as a purely economic project. Otherwise, it is unthinkable that Poland could sell gas to Germany.
On the other hand, when it comes to gas solidarity, the Polish government has fewer problems with neighboring countries with which it considers itself to be on an equal footing. Russia stopped gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria in April. Most recently, Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek said that Warsaw only wanted to share the supplies from its well-stocked gas storage facilities with those countries that had shown solidarity with Poland in the past. The extent to which Poland will be able to release gas can only be said at the beginning of the heating season, he added.
The German government’s representative for Poland, Dietmar Nietan (SPD), said, with regard to Germany’s dependence on Russian gas, that only the federal government under Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) had “corrected the wrong policies of the Merkel and Schröder governments”. The “turning point” announced by Scholz completely readjusts many central policy areas, including above all the relationship with Russia, Nietan told the Tagesspiegel. “Of course, the warnings from Poland should have been taken much more seriously by the previous governments,” he admitted.
In his words, everything possible must be done in the current situation “to prevent Russia from weakening and dividing the EU”. Nietan pointed out that the German and Polish economies are “very closely interlinked”. If the economy in Germany collapses as a result of a gas shortage and rising energy prices, this would have “at the same time negative consequences for Poland’s economic stability,” he said.
In fact, the Polish government probably has no interest in Russian President Vladimir Putin showing off the Europeans on the issue of gas solidarity. Meanwhile, the governing party PiS is currently conducting its conflict with the EU Commission about judicial reform on the open stage. Because the EU Commission continues to withhold payments from the multi-billion dollar Corona reconstruction fund due to the lack of guarantees for the reform of the judiciary, the PiS sharpened the tone of the rule of law dispute considerably. Secretary General Sobolewski said in an interview on Monday that, if necessary, “all guns” would be used in the dispute with the EU Commission.
Poland can expect the sum of around 35 billion euros from the Corona aid fund. However, whether the sum can be paid out depends on the reform of the controversial disciplinary body, which can punish and dismiss any judge. Because critics fear that the controversial chamber will continue to exist in a different form despite an amendment to the law, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has asked Warsaw to take further steps towards judicial reform.
