Two hundred million euros to fight the energy crisis triggered by the war. This would be the amount of the plan that the energy commission is working on to help the countries most exposed to the energy shock and gas price increases due to the war between Russia and Ukraine.
According to press sources, these are funds deriving from the unused reserves of the Next Generation Eu.
Gas price increases, a new Recovery Fund?
The idea was born during the Versailles summit held on 10 March in order to respond to the requests of the Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, and the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron. At the time, the two had strongly supported the need to prepare one common fiscal response to the crisisi triggered by the invasion of Ukraine. A Recovery Fund “in 2022 sauce” aimed at financing energy and defense expenses.
However, since there are unused resources of the previous Next Generation Eu, deriving from the failure to collect 200 billion euros, Brussels' response could however, at least in part, always come from the old plan, even if the amount could go down if the States decided to collect the loans that had been previously granted.
Who will these 200 billion go to?
The details are still to be defined: what can this money be used for? Under what conditions to grant loans? What is certain is that the funds could be allocated to the most exposed countries towards Russia and that they must therefore make greater efforts to reduce their energy dependence on Moscow. In fact, we recall that in the last two months, Russia has collected 62 billion euros from the export of fossil fuels, 44 of which come from European Union countries. The state that has imported the most fossil fuels is Germany, paying a bill of 9 billion euros. They follow Italy (6,9 billion), China (6,7 billion), the Netherlands (5,6 billion), Turkey (4,1 billion) and France (3,8 billion). As points out the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air “A quarter of Russia's fossil fuel shipments arrived in just six EU ports: Rotterdam (Netherlands), Maasvlakte (Netherlands), Trieste (Italy), Gdansk (Poland) and Zeebrugge (Belgium).”
Italy could therefore be one of the candidates to receive the funds that the EU Commission could soon put on the plate to counter the energy crisis, also because at a time when interest rates are rising and the spread came close to 200 basis points, receiving money on loan from Brussels for our country could be the most convenient choice.
