Ms Kadri Simson:

I will start with the Energy Charter Treaty because my team is negotiating its modernisation. We have studied the position on opting out of an energy charter treaty. However, as the Senator knows, there is a very long transition period in which we cannot change and do not have a right to change the organisational decision-making, but we remain a member. The work is ongoing and we have not lost hope that we can modernise the charter treaty.

My next point is on lock-in effects. Right now, according to the EU legislation, we do not have in place a ban on long-term contracts for the companies buying natural gas. In our gas decarbonisation package, we just made a proposal that any contract signed by a private company should not extend beyond 2049. The market participants are private companies and some of them, including Gazprom, have long-term contracts. Some of them will last until 2040, so we believed it was necessary to give information to our trading partners that, after 2040, our gas market will be de-carbonised and that they will not have a trading opportunity involving fossil fuels. Of course, we have also sent them a clear message that we will also prioritise their willingness to tackle their methane emissions, for example. This was one of the main deliverables for my sector at the last Conference of the Parties in that we managed to sign a methane pledge. More than 100 signatories, by signing, committed to tackling methane emissions.

There is a decision that EU funds will not be financing fossil fuel infrastructure. This is REPowerEU. We gave landlocked member states a right to use their recovery funds for some necessary interconnectors. The situation is that we have several crises ongoing. All member states have committed to becoming climate neutral by 2050 but this year some of them need emergency investments to get rid of Russian imports. We want to help them to replace Russian pipeline supplies with alternatives. It is not easy to replace them with renewables in such a short term. This is what is behind the flexibility that offers some landlocked countries a window in which they can use their own recovery funds to finance pipelines. Mainly, they will be financed against the market because, in the next decade, there will be a continuous demand for oil and gas. Without our legislative proposals, we will do what we can to reduce our fossil fuel consumption.