This is “great news” and “a triumph for Portuguese and Spanish diplomacy”, said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa on the sidelines of the opening of an exhibition by Paula Rego.

The governments of Portugal and Spain reached a political agreement in Brussels with the European Commission for the establishment of a temporary mechanism that will allow the average price of gas to be set at 50 euros per MWh.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa stressed that this mechanism will be “a great help” to counter the high prices of energy and “a sign of European solidarity”, even on the part of countries that disagreed with the position of the two Iberian countries.

The commitment announced in Brussels will last around 12 months and will allow the average price of gas to be fixed at around 50 euros per megawatt, against the current reference price on the market of 90 euros, with the price starting at 40 euros, as soon as the political agreement is formalized, which should happen this week.

At a joint press conference in the Belgian capital, the Minister of Environment and Climate Action, Duarte Cordeiro, alongside the third vice-president of the Spanish Government responsible for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, underlined that the political compromise now reached with the community executive “makes it possible to protect consumers who were exposed to the market”.