What is missing from the EU Court of Auditors’ report on gas supply

The European Court of Auditors (ECA) report on the European Union’s management of gas security released yesterday gives credence to what we have been writing for the past three years. Officials based in Luxembourg have reported today, albeit in a very nuanced form, what we said then, even before things happened. In short:

· the preventive safety plans that were supposed to be ready in 2019 were never made (only Germany, Luxembourg and Lithuania had them: moreover, they were useless);

· the rapid abandonment of Russian gas imports, which in 2021 were 45% of all EU gas imports, created a supply crisis, which in turn triggered an affordability crisis;

During the crisis, the EU achieved its target of reducing gas demand by 15 %, but we were unable to establish whether this was due to the measures taken alone or also to external factors (e.g. example, demand destruction and a mild winter);

· the obligation to fill gas storage facilities across the EU was met and the 90 % target was even exceeded, but these are normal filling levels before the crisis;

· it is impossible to assess the effectiveness of the gas price cap given that prices remained low after it was introduced; If anything, the Court highlights the risks arising from its introduction;

· the AggregateEU ​​platform for joint gas purchases did not provide added value compared to existing platforms as the crisis-induced price differences between EU Member States had already significantly reduced when AggregateEU ​​started operations;

· solidarity between states has seen only 8 of the 40 possible agreements signed: three of these are Italy’s.

An interesting fact: in 2022 alone, the gas crisis cost the EU 390 billion in subsidies (according to Bruegel, 540 billion were spent between September 2021 and June 2023).

What is missing from the CCE report? Two things: the first is that the crisis did not begin in February 2022 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine but much earlier, at the beginning of the summer, when Gazprom stopped selling spot gas in Europe and did NOT fill the large storage it had in Germany. Here lies one of the problems: Germany did not have any rules for the strategic filling of storage for safety reasons.

The second thing missing is a minimal mention of the safety of gas pipelines. In the report there is not a word about Nord Stream being blown up (indeed, into the water). Strange oversight, let’s say, given that it was a question of evaluating the security of gas supplies.

Instead, there is and for good reason, a fundamental issue: Article 194 of the TFEU says that the EU must guarantee security of supply. Too bad he never gave a definition of security. The CCE therefore uses the IEA definition, namely: the uninterrupted availability of energy sources at an affordable price. This would have been enough to give a judgment on the Commission’s work, after all.