Paris is reportedly furious with Berlin for launching a domestic energy aid scheme without consulting its neighbor
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A recent move by Germany to allocate billions of euros to support its domestic energy industry has angered French officials, The Telegraph reported on Wednesday citing official sources.
“The French are really pissed off with the Germans, especially Scholz. They aren’t saying it in public but they are furious in private… The Germans are doing what the French are often accused of: making decisions without consulting its partners to serve their interests,” an unnamed source told the news outlet.
The German government launched a €200 billion domestic energy aid scheme late last month, foregoing consultations on the matter with French authorities, which are considered traditional for the two closest EU partners, according to the report.
In response, French President Emmanuel Macron postponed a planned meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz where the energy crisis was to be discussed, among other topics. Earlier this week, he criticized Scholz’s move, saying it poses a risk of causing “distortions” in the EU’s energy security.
“If we want a coherent approach, it is not national strategies that need to be adopted but a European strategy,” Macron told the French news outlet Les Echos.
Scholz’s spokesman, cited by the Telegraph, acknowledged “there are a number of different issues that we are dealing with at the moment… on which we have not yet reached a unified position.”
Germany’s aid package also riled both Paolo Gentiloni, European Commissioner for the economy, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who noted that the EU needed “a higher level of solidarity” and “a common European solution” to solve the energy crisis. Gentiloni said the Commission would review Berlin’s plan.
The aid also seemingly goes against the European Commission’s new emergency package of measures aimed to battle the energy crisis, unveiled earlier this week. The draft proposal, which is to be discussed by EU leaders later this week, expressly calls for increased solidarity between the bloc members in dealing with energy issues, joint gas purchases and temporary price correction measures for Europe’s major gas exchange, the Dutch TTF.
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