00:00Our Europe editor Maria Tadeo spoke to the economy commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis yesterday
00:04and she started by asking him about this, about whether the EU would have to contemplate easing
00:09sanctions on Russian commodities as the US and UK have done to ease the impact of the energy
00:16crisis on Europeans. Well we already saw back in 2022 that Russia tried to use its fossil fuel
00:25supplies as a tool for blackmail and manipulation and we paid a quite dear economic price for
00:31having this dependency from Russia so therefore there's no point of going back to this. We have
00:38diversified our supplies, our largest gas supply is now Norway, our largest LNG supplier is US and so on
00:45so there's strategic decisions taken to move away completely from Russian oil and gas
00:55and we have to follow it through. And but you rule out because it's very important that by the winter,
01:00by Christmas the temperatures going down that the EU will not take any measures easing sanctions on
01:06Russian energy at any level. Well if anything we need to strengthen sanctions against Russia not ease
01:12because actually Russia is a country benefiting from this conflict in the Middle East and those higher
01:18energy prices getting substantial windfall profits so we should not facilitate it further. And it's worth
01:27noting that already now we started the process of refilling our gas storages. Well it's currently goes so
01:35to say within the historical range of this time of the year. That's something we in any case need to
01:42do,
01:42we need to prepare ourselves for next winter. But you don't feel blackouts, you don't fear that
01:47once again as we talked about in 2022 there was a real fear that Europe would come to a halt,
01:53it will
01:53grind to a halt, that the industry would not be able to operate because of a shortage of supplies. You
01:58don't expect that to be the case by the end of the year? No, we do not expect this to
02:03be the case
02:05now. Indeed there was this risk back in 2022 or winter from 22 to 23 exactly because we were dependent
02:14from Russian fossil fuel supplies so we should not get back there. This week the head of the Italian
02:20government sent a letter to the Commission. By now it's very clear that Giorgia Meloni believes the
02:24Commission has not taken her concerns seriously. She says that this is just as equally important energy
02:30to defense. What are you going to offer the Italian Prime Minister that is going to placate
02:34her anger? Because by now it's clear they are not satisfied with the measures you provided.
02:38We are obviously now looking at policy options and also our fiscal policy response but the main
02:48message in case remains that the support measures need to be temporary and targeted. The ones which are
02:54not sustaining or increasing demand for fossil fuels so on one hand not just to perpetuate higher energy
03:02demand and thus higher global energy prices because we are facing supply shock so we cannot resolve it by
03:10stimulating demand and second we must keep in mind also more limited fiscal room of maneuver and also
03:21flexibility is already existing in our fiscal framework we have a number of automatic stabilizers
03:26which can play out which allows for in a sense certain fiscal buffer before even member states come
03:32with a discretionary measures but we are doing this assessment and preparing it. So you're listening to her
03:37concerns? Well we certainly are listening to the concerns of member states and looking appropriate policy response.
03:44what was it there was?
03:46Why is it a great deal?
03:46Why isn't it more than that, it's a great deal?
03:46Why is it only a place that there is an effect in the past and 15 minutes
03:46in the future, but it's also a great deal.
03:47So that's a great deal.
03:47So that's very good.
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