The European gas emergency plan to prepare for a possible stop in Russian gas supplies comes into force on Tuesday. The new law was published in the Official Journal of the EU on Monday.
The plan calls for all EU countries to voluntarily reduce their gas consumption by 15 percent from early August to March next year, compared to the average consumption over the past five years over that period. Against the background of the war in Ukraine, Russia has already drastically reduced its supplies to the EU.
According to figures from the EU Commission, a total of 45 billion cubic meters of gas must be saved. Germany would have to use about 10 billion cubic meters less gas to reach the 15 percent target.
If not enough is saved and there are far-reaching supply bottlenecks, the next step can be to trigger an EU-wide alarm with binding savings targets. However, the hurdle for this is high: it would need the approval of at least 15 EU countries, which together make up at least 65 percent of the total population of the Union. At the same time, several countries - such as Spain and Italy - have negotiated exceptions to the binding savings targets for this case and want to save less than 15 percent. The emergency plan is initially valid for one year.
