MADRID, 20 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Prime Minister of Portugal, António Costa, has acknowledged that they still do not have the necessary infrastructure to complete the energy connection with Spain, specifically 162 kilometres, and in turn trusts that an agreement will be reached with France, a country that is suspicious of the project known as ‘MidCat’.
“We are 162 kilometers away from reaching the border”, Costa recognized in the Assembly of the Republic before meeting with the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the French President, Emmanuel Macron, in Brussels, at the headquarters of the European Council .
In turn, he stressed that how Spain links with the rest of Europe is “indifferent”, in response to what Portugal would look like if an agreement with France is not reached. “The fundamental thing is that we are united with Spain and they with the rest of Europe,” said the Portuguese prime minister, according to the Lusa agency.
In this sense, Costa has insisted that he trusts that the agreement will be reached since this interconnection with all European countries “generates a series of advantages” for all of them, not only for Spain and Portugal.
Costa had already expressed his optimism last weekend at the end of the European Socialist Party (PES) congress held in Berlin, when he stated that “the meetings are going very well” and insisted that there will be an interconnection agreement “soon” “although not be called MidCat and have another name”.
Last Friday, Costa already held a meeting in the German capital with Sánchez and the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, focused on the MidCat project, a gas pipeline that aims to link the Iberian Peninsula with the rest of the European Union through the Pyrenees and that although Berlin has welcomed it with interest, Paris has not so much welcomed it, which alleges that it does not solve the problem in the short term.