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Foreign ministers from Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal and Spain have complained to the European Commission that the proposed €3.5 billion in new funds for energy still contained “regional imbalances” with not enough attention to southern Europe. This sparked a row over budgeting which could affect the proposed Malta-Italy electricity link.

Europeanvoice reports how at the December summit the EU leaders has agreed in principle to provide €5 billion in new funds for the EU’s budget, of which €3.5 billion were to be allotted to energy. However, the list of projects drafted by the Commission, which included interconnectors or links, wind energy and carbon capture and storage (CSS) projects, immediately had to be overhauled after complaints from France and Italy that they would not benefit sufficiently.

The list then met opposition from net contributors to the EU budget and other countries that felt they were not going to get enough from the proposed scheme.

A further revision of the list added €25m for interconnectors or links that will allow the flow of gas to move from western Europe to the east in case of short-term supply reductions, such as that caused by the recent Russia-Ukraine gas dispute. It also included €100m for the GALSI gas pipeline connecting Algeria and Italy and €20m for an interconnector linking Malta and Italy.

Claude Turmes, a Luxembourgeois Green MEP, was quoted by Europeanvoice as saying that the list represented “state aid to big energy oligopolies” and did nothing to promote increased energy efficiency or the development of green technologies.

In his view, the projects would do little to boost economic recovery, as many of the schemes would not start until later this year, and in some cases would get under way only in 2011 or 2012.