The Spanish People’s Party said Thursday that the Iberian mechanism for the price of gas used to produce electricity is “a failure” and that consumers have been harmed by the compensation paid to electricity companies, which the government denies.
“Do you assume the failure of the Iberian mechanism that has not prevented us from paying four times more for electricity today than a year ago?” asked the parliamentary leader of the People’s Party (PP, right) in the Spanish parliament. Concepción Gamarra (known as Cuca Gamarra), during a debate addressing the government led by the socialists.
The deputy of the largest opposition party in Spain asked the Spaniards to “look at the latest bill” of the electricity they have received and note that it has a “new price” called the “adjustment mechanism” of the decree-law that the so-called Iberian price cap mechanism for electricity production came into effect on 14 June.
According to the deputy, this “adjustment mechanism” increased the bills of the affected consumers by between 25% and 34% compared to what they paid before the adoption of the Iberian mechanism, which was agreed with the European Commission by the governments of Portugal and Spain .
The mechanism provides that electricity companies are compensated for the difference between the maximum price determined by this instrument and the real value of gas on the wholesale market, which increased mainly after the start of the war in Ukraine, on February 24, as a result of a attack by the Russian army.
Compensation to companies is shared by consumers of the so-called “regulated tariff” in Spain, which is indexed to the price of gas on the wholesale market.
In the case of Spain, 40% of electricity consumers have this rate and it represents most of the market, unlike what happens in other countries such as Portugal.
For consumers with fixed rates, this fee only applies if the contracts they have extended or new contracts are signed.
The Spanish government – like the Portuguese – has said that the Iberian mechanism did not prevent the increase in light, but made it much lower than what would have happened if it had not existed, as happens in other European countries.
This is what the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, repeated today, in the same debate in parliament, who said that Spaniards today pay for electricity at prices “two to three times” lower than those of consumers “in the main countries of de Europa” and that EUR 22 million per day have been saved on these costs since the entry into force of the Iberian Mechanism.
In the same debate, the PP, which has ruled Spain alternately with the Socialists (PSOE) for the past 40 years, accused the current left-wing government of increasing Spain’s need for Russian gas with a “brilliant” diplomatic policy toward Algeria. leading to the closure of a gas pipeline between the two countries.
The delegate, who said that Spain’s regasification infrastructure is the work of the PP, which can now serve the rest of Europe to reduce its dependence on Russian gas, also defended the increase in energy production in Spanish nuclear power plants, something the party said. has come to claim.
Nuclear power is a way to “guarantee an adequate energy supply and at an affordable price,” said Cuca Gamarra, who asked the Spanish government, which plans to deactivate nuclear power plants, to renounce “ideology and sectarianism”.
Source: DN
