Ihe European Commission announced at the end of April the concrete launch of an unprecedented process, Aggregate EU, allowing European companies to register their needs in terms of gas purchases, with a view to common purchases at Union level.
Long put forward by the services of the European Commission, and taken up by the French presidency of the Union in the second half of 2008, the day after (already) gas pressure exerted on Europe by Russia, this system aims to use the collective market power of Europeans to negotiate better prices with international suppliers.
In this, it has a positive facet, as the Union’s energy policy in recent months seems to be inspired by unilateral approaches, contrary to the wish formulated by Article 194.1 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union which consider that “in a spirit of solidarity between the Member States, [la politique de l’Union vise] to ensure the security of the Union’s energy supply”. It thus constitutes a message intended to show that Europeans are united in the management of their supplies, as well as in that of their storage and their gas transport networks.
Cooperation or competition?
While the wish of the first consultation was to buy 11.6 billion cubic meters of gas, the offers exceeded 13.4 billion cubic meters. This reflects a positive reception from international gas exporters, but remains modest in comparison to European gas consumption, which is around 400 billion cubic meters.
In its terms, the mechanism for aggregating demand and joint gas purchases put in place is also a challenge. A private platform will be in charge of coordinating this pool of buyers. It is not, as with vaccines, a pool of European states, but a pool of companies which, on a voluntary basis, will agree to use (or not) the services of this operator. private.
This pool brings together very heterogeneous companies, both in terms of the volume of gas purchased and their financial power. As a result, market players risk being torn between cooperative-type behavior and competitive-type behavior, or even “free riding”. How will this platform be articulated with the current trading systems specific to each player? De facto, such a mechanism is likely to benefit more small companies, whose bargaining power is weak.
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