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Borrell says EU finally free from its energy dependence on Russia

The European Union’s diplomacy chief said the tensions in the energy market can no longer be attributed to the situation in Ukraine

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell

© Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP

MADRID, January 22. /TASS/. The European Union’s diplomacy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc had completely overcome its energy dependence on Russia.

"We have, in a few months, abolished the energy dependence on Russia that we had built up for years," he said in an interview with El Diario published on Sunday.

"We have been through an extraordinarily tense phase of rising prices, but they are back at pre-war values," Borrell told the Spanish newspaper. "We are again with the megawatt hour of gas at the pre-war price, which was already very high. <...> But the brutal peak in August was largely caused by the speculative tensions in the markets," he argued.

The tensions in the energy market can no longer be attributed to the situation in Ukraine, Borrell said. "it is a structural problem of energy and, in particular, of the correlation between gas prices and electricity prices," he clarified. He said hopefully the European Commission would soon present a proposal to correct the situation.

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