Statements by President of the Government after taking part in the "One Planet" Climate Summit

Paris

President of the Government.- As you are aware, I have just attended the Paris Climate Summit organised jointly by the President of the French Republic - to some extent this is a continuation and extension of what we did here back in 2015 - the Secretary General of the United Nations and the President of the World Bank.

I very briefly want to summarise Spain's position on this issue. Spain, as we have mentioned before, considers that the events that took place here, in Paris, on 12 December 2015, were very positive. For the first time, we have a legally binding agreement that a significant part of international society has committed to in order to combat climate change and reduce carbon emissions.

Secondly, Spain is committed to this fight against climate change. We have very significantly increased our aid to countries that are in the worst situations, which by the year 2020 will amount to 900 million euros per annum and, at the same time, Spain is meeting all its commitments to reduce carbon emissions by the year 2020 - this is virtually completed already - and also its commitments by the year 2030.To this end, we are drafting a Law to Combat Climate Change and on Energy Transition.

And the third comment I wanted to make was about energy transition. All of this requires, as you would expect, an orderly and efficient transition and there are two ways to do this: firstly energy efficiency, which we are working on and taking decisions on in our country; secondly, increasing our renewable energy farms. I believe that we will meet all our renewable commitments, without any problems, by the year 2020, and we will continue working on this in the future. We held two auctions in 2017 for a total amount of 8,000 megawatts without the need for incentives.

I believe that this will work well, but there is one issue that is a priority for us, which I have already mentioned, and that is electricity interconnections. We have agreed that, in the same way as a summit was held in Madrid on this issue, which served to make progress on interconnections with France, another summit will be held in the first half of next year in Lisbon, which will be attended by the President of the European Commission, Jean Claude Juncker; the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron; the Portuguese Prime Minister, Antonio Costa, and myself. I repeat, the main goal is to improve our energy interconnections. This would be very positive. It would allow us to depend much more on renewable energies because, at those times that these cannot be used, it would be very easy to use the interconnections with France.

I believe that, in summary, this is what I can report to you. If you want to ask anything…

Q.- President of the Government, we have heard President Macron say that the fight against climate change is being lost. He even said that some of the countries that were sat round the table here could disappear within a few decades if measures are not taken, and called for action to be taken quickly. I would like to know if you agree with this alarmist tone, this alarmist message, we have heard on climate change and whether you believe that it is now necessary to proceed in Spain towards eliminating coal by closing down coal-fired power stations, above all after what happened at the Bonn Summit just a few weeks ago.

President of the Government.- I believe that there is something very important here, which is that people are becoming more aware of the problem. That is very important. And how do you raise awareness to this problem? By seeing the things that are happening and listening to the speeches being given by some people.

But I believe that steps are now being taken in the right direction. There are already many cities that have set a date for the exclusive use of electric cars. Today we have heard some representatives of very important industry players; we just heard the Chairman of Renault speak about the need and the efforts that the industries are making, and many other people, in many countries, saying that they have made a commitment to increasing their renewable energy farms.

There are obviously problems, we are now witnessing problems of drought and desertification which may occur in certain areas of Spain. However, what I do believe is that we are taking steps in the in the right direction. Measures are being taken, and in fact in countries such as Spain, emissions are clearly being reduced.

On the issue of coal, I have just said something which, furthermore, is of considerable common sense. Nothing in life is done from one day to the next, and for that reason in the law we will approve next year on climate change and the orderly transition in the energy sector we will logically tackle this issue. We cannot eliminate coal from one day to the next, in the same way as others cannot shut down their nuclear power stations from one day to the next.

We are going to work on energies that cause the fewest possible problems, but at this moment in time we still need all of them. There is no doubt that when there are more electricity interconnections and more progress is made on decisions on the creation of renewable energies, things will become easier.

Q.- President of the Government, I wanted to ask for your assessment because today Mr Puigdemont has made another statement, in this case to assert that if he wins the elections he will return to Spain; but he has insinuated that to do so, the government must ignore the separation of powers and urge the public prosecutor's office to halt the criminal proceedings.

President of the Government.- In reality, getting involved in controversy and dispute, after everything we have seen, with Mr Puigdemont, makes very little sense. But what I would like to say is that I am the President of the Government and, while I am the President of the Government, the law will be upheld in Spain. And it would be incredible for someone who was the former regional president and broke the law to now call for the President of the Government to break the law.

Hence, I am going to respect the court rulings, because I respect the principle of the separation of powers and because I act as a democrat which, moreover, is my obligation: to follow the Constitution and the law.

Thank you very much.

Non official translation