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By Trend

By 2022, the EU´s energy system should be more resilient to possible disruption, Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission’s vice president for Energy Union said in an interview with ICIS, Trend reports.

Reflecting on his five-year tenure which ends in October, Sefcovic said the EU’s energy union strategy, adopted in 2015, has set out some of the most ambitious goals globally with regards to bringing clean energy to consumers and pursuing the integration of electricity and gas markets.

Four years on, key projects are being implemented on time and by 2022, the EU´s energy system should be more resilient to possible disruption or shocks, he said. By then, member states should have access to three sources of gas.

The full integration of markets and decarbonisation remain challenges for the incoming European Union administration in modernising the energy sector, he said.

Sefcovic described the European Union’s activities in the last few years as the most profound modernisation of the energy sector in recent times.

“At the start, there was a need to convince member states why the European approach is much better. Mutual trust and solidarity also make economic sense,” he said.

“The EU’s energy union is just becoming a reality but is exceeding our expectation – we have opened up the free flow of [electricity and natural gas] more than expected,” he said.

The EU has a set of rules that could be applied to states which fail to comply with regulations. However, Sefcovic said Brussels had always “preferred to be on the more positive side, motivating, rather than punishing states into compliance”.

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