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Why Portugal chastised France over major blackout

Last month’s blackout in Spain and Portugal highlights a crucial yet a vital link to France – one that impacts not only Iberian energy security but also the EU’s. Portugal is pushing France to improve its power grid.

The Iberian Peninsula was plunged into darkness last month as a major blackout struck the region, impacting Portugal, Spain, and certain areas of southwestern France.

The event started with a failure at a substation in Granada, Spain, triggering a chain reaction of grid failures in other provinces. Within seconds, Spain’s connection to France’s electrical grid was lost, causing the Iberian grid to collapse and become isolated from the rest of Europe.

Though the blackout lasted for an estimated ten hours in most areas, it was reported that other parts of the region experienced even longer disruptions. With the total disconnected load report being 30 Gigawatts, this event became one of the largest blackouts in European history. Emergency electricity support was received by Spain and Portugal from neighbouring countries such as France and Morocco.

The outage resulted in major disruptions to everyday life, from planes being grounded to hospitals having to switch to back-up generators. Foul play was denied as a cause of the outage, but the source of the event is still under investigation.

As a result of this incident, Portugal has taken on efforts to actively press France into improving its cross-border electricity interconnections. Recently, it even involved the European Union, citing the issue as a European problem and not just a dispute between neighbouring countries.

France is the only country that physically links the Iberian Peninsula’s electricity grid to the rest of Europe. This means that, based on the existing infrastructure, all imported and exported electricity that flows between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of the European grid must pass through France. Hence, there are no direct interconnections from Portugal to other EU countries except via Spain, then France.

This setup forces Portugal and Spain to rely on France to balance the supply and demand of energy to maintain grid stability. The limited capacity of the France-Spain interconnection causes a bottleneck affecting the region’s energy security and market integration.

So, coming back to Portugal and the EU, the former argues that having strong electrical connections is essential for the entirety of the region’s market to function effectively. The EU even set targets for how much electricity countries should be able to import and export to ensure a connected market.

Yet, the connections between Spain and France are far below this target, consequently isolating the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of Europe’s market.

With the urgency of the matter at hand and the goal to prevent another major blackout, Portugal believes that the EU has the power to pressure France to act quickly and fairly. The nation hopes that the organisation’s support would speed up the improvements on power connectors and prevent other nations from blocking the project’s progress, affecting the entire continent.

With energy security being a shared responsibility among the EU, a well-connected energy system that includes the Iberian Peninsula is in fact in the hands of France as a member state.

What does France have to say about all this commotion? Right now, the nation’s response has shown signs of reservation. It has expressed reluctance to rapidly expand interconnection capacity with the Iberian Peninsula, citing concerns about underutilized existing infrastructure and its focus on clean energy goals within its own grid. France’s officials also emphasised a measured, coordinated European approach rather than unilateral pressure, allowing for solutions that fit within broader EU transition strategies.

The nation pointed to ongoing projects like the Bay of Biscay electricity link that aims to double the capacity between Spain and France from 2.8 Gigawatts to 5 Gigawatts, though the project is due in 2028.

Portugal is right to say that this matter is not just an issue between neighbouring countries but rather a threat to the entire EU. At the same time, France also makes a valid point about the need for a multilateral solution.

The issue goes beyond power connectors; it’s about systemic gaps in EU energy security. While both countries have valid points, true energy resilience requires a long-term overhaul of the EU’s energy grid. Through this, greater energy security can be achieved by the Iberian Peninsula, especially Portugal.

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