Europe to fund Spain's electricity interconnection with France to help prevent major power outages

Europe will help boost Spain's energy interconnection with France, which has been pending for decades. The project is key to preventing future major power outages, like the one happened on 28 April. It will be financed through an agreement with the European investment Bank (EIB), which is expected to be signed "in the next few days", according to EIB president Nadia Calviño.

"We are finalising the electricity interconnector between Spain and France," said the former Spanish minister of economy. Calviño resigned from her position in the Spanish government to head the financial arm of the European Union, which will double its investment in defence this year.

According to Calviño, this is one of the "most important" projects being developed by the EIB, as the interconnector between Spain and France (through the Bay of Biscay) "will represent a very important change in terms of integrating the Iberian system into the European system".

She stated that the EIB must guarantee this process of "moving towards energy transition, away from dependence on fossil fuels and towards efficient and sustainable energy". For this reason, Calviño said that she is working "very closely" with the European Commission, and in particular with Teresa Ribera (former minister for ecological transition and current vice-president of the European Commission), to develop instruments to support these innovative green energy companies and the agreements for the deployment of energy networks.

The former Galician MP explained that one of the most important elements for the stabilisation of the entire European electricity system is interconnection. Describing Spain as "an energy island", she is confident that the electricity corridor between Spain and France will help prevent further blackouts like the one on 28 April - the largest in Europe in the last century.

The submarine interconnection project between Spain and France was declared a Project of Common Interest (PCI) by the European Commission and the European Parliament in 2013. Although it is one of the key infrastructures included in the integrated national energy and climate plan (PNIEC), it has remained very much in its initial stage for more than a decade.

The project consists of the construction of two independent electricity links, each with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts (MW), between Cubnezais (France) and Gatika (Spain), of approximately 400 kilometres in length, including a 300-kilometre maritime section.

After she left La Moncloa, Calviño avoided commenting on many current issues, such as BBVA's takeover bid for Sabadell bank, but she did make clear the need for a "single capital market" and therefore advocated "cross-border mergers", for which she expressed her willingness for the EIB to contribute "as much as it can".

Moreover, the former minister announced an additional boost from the EIB this year in the financing of security and defence projects in Europe and even announced that its intention now is to go further and "more than double" last year's figure, exceeding the 2 billion planned for 2025.