{"id":194124,"date":"2025-06-18T10:14:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T10:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/194124\/"},"modified":"2025-06-18T10:14:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T10:14:09","slug":"eu-commission-sides-with-berlin-in-switchgear-row-with-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/194124\/","title":{"rendered":"EU Commission sides with Berlin in switchgear row with France"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<strong>The EU executive has sided with Germany in rejecting demands to reopen the EU market to electrical switchgear made with climate-wrecking F-gases.<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n<p>\nOn Tuesday, France, backed by Estonia and the Czechs, called for an \u201curgent\u201d review of EU rules on high-voltage switchgear, key components in the power grid, opening up a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euractiv.com\/section\/eet\/news\/france-blows-a-fuse-over-eu-rules-handing-switchgear-market-to-germany\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">spat with Germany<\/a> over the multi-billion market.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<p>\nCurrent rules appear to favour Germany\u2019s Siemens Energy, which produces switchgear containing no harmful gases. Hitherto standard products containing SF6 \u2013 a greenhouse gas 23,500 times more potent than CO2 \u2013 must be off the market from 2028.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cThe supply chain constraints arising from this limited availability of alternative technologies could seriously impact our ability to achieve our decarbonisation targets,\u201d warned the Irish deputy ambassador to the EU, C\u00e1it Moran, at an EU Council environment summit on Tuesday.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nEleven EU countries in total supported Paris in its demand to change the rules, including heavyweights Italy, Sweden and Romania.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nGermany did not agree. The Commission was right not to open the market and Berlin \u201ccannot support the French document,\u201d the country\u2019s ambassador Helene Winter said at the ministerial meeting in Luxembourg.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nFar from boosting European companies, opening the market to Siemens\u2019 competitors risked creating a new dependence on imports, she argued \u2013 because available alternatives to SF6 switchgear require a gas, fluoronitrile, that was \u201cno longer produced in the EU.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\nSpeaking at the summit, Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra supported Berlin&#8217;s argument, confirming that no European chemicals companies are manufacturing fluoronitrile.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cLet us not increase our dependencies on other parts of the world,\u201d Hoekstra said, ruling out any changes to the existing regulatory framework.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nA sit-down with high-voltage grid operators may be needed to settle differences, the Dutch politician suggested.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<p>\n(rh, om)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The EU executive has sided with Germany in rejecting demands to reopen the EU market to electrical switchgear&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187],"class_list":{"0":"post-194124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114703844212230584","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}