There is no room for coalition-opposition bickering when it comes to the energy crisis and the need to find solutions to soaring prices, opposition Smer-SD chair Robert Fico declared during a parliamentary debate on the energy bill on Thursday and offered a "basic political truce" to the coalition in the name of helping the industry and the people. In his speech, Fico called for an expertise-based argument.
Fico announced that the Smer-SD party would support the bill in the first reading and prepare a set of amending proposals at a later stage. He asked the Economy Ministry not to wait for the European Union with any plans to address the energy prices growth, as Fico believes that the plans proposed by the European Commission are unfeasible for Slovakia.
In Fico's view, the public needs to be calmed down first. He advocated a tripartite meeting (representatives of Government, employers and employees) to discuss solutions together. Some of the measures proposed he finds acceptable and a whole slew of other measures could be attached to a potential state of emergency, if it is declared.
A number of coalition politicians, including Juraj Seliga (For the People), Gyorgy Gyimesi (OLaNO) and Economy Minister Karel Hirman welcomed Fico's speech in Parliament. Seliga said that he was curious to see amending proposals to the coalition-sponsored energy bill that Smer-SD was planning to come up with in the second reading and added that he did not mean that cynically. Similarly, Gyimesi promised to support Smer-SD's amending proposals if they were good and if they come up with something that the Economy Minister might have overlooked.
Economy Minister Hirman agreed with Fico that it is counterproductive to fearmonger and scare the public. Hirman pointed out that the prices have been fixed for households until the end of the year and there is still time to make the new prices bearable as of January. The coalition bill is being deliberated on in a fast-tracked procedure, with Hirman declaring that he is not opposed to "reasonable, constructive" proposals. Minister also agreed with Fico that the EU proposal is bad and useless for Slovakia. He assured Parliament that he was in intense talks with the EU and Slovakia has also submitted its own motion. "Our position is quite difficult at the moment because our situation is rather specific," he stated.
The legislation passed by the Government on Wednesday to tackle the energy crisis is plan B, with the pan-European solution being plan A, House Committee for Economic Affairs chair Peter Kremsky declared at the Central European Gas Congress on Wednesday.
"I'm somewhat sceptical about the odds of us arriving at some comprehensive solution at the EU level, however, because the markets of the member states differ quite a lot and their dependence on gas and the manner of electricity generation also varies," said Kremsky. As for gas, he believes that Slovakia should have alternatives to the Russian supplies.
When reducing dependence on Russian gas, EU funds should be used better, MEP Robert Hajsel stated on Thursday in Bratislava at the Central European Gas Congress, organised by the Slovak Gas and Oil Association. "We can't completely rely on Russia supplying gas without interruption," he stressed. According to Hajsel, it is inevitable to find money in the budget to pay for capping energy prices. “We need to use EU funds, ask the European Commission to be able to transfer money from cohesion support, that is, from cohesion funds, structural and investment funds, also in the recovery plan so that they can be used to complete the construction of (energy) infrastructure," MEP Hajsel emphasised.
Source: TASR
