Following the REPowerEU plan and the Member States’ agreement about reducing gas consumption by at least 15 per cent between August 2022 and March 2023, Slovakia’s Ministry of Economy announced that the country has reduced its gas consumption by 23 per cent in the month of January alone.
This announcement follows a request for correction made by the government of Slovakia to Eurostat, noting there were some discrepancies in the data stored about Slovakia’s gas reservoirs. Thus, the data announced by the Ministry regarding January’s consumption were possible after an in-depth analysis of the previous months and the country’s gas storage and gas consumption.
In fact, the request of the European Union to reduce gas consumption by 15 per cent was to compare with the consumption of the previous 5 years, in which the data from Slovakia were not correct. A process to adjust the data for the period from 2017 to 2021 is currently underway.
Overall, the EU has also reached the goal of reducing gas consumption by 15 per cent, registering a 19.3 per cent reduction. Among these countries, Slovenia (-14.2 per cent) recorded a significant drop but has not yet reached the 15 per cent target. Within CEE, consumption fell the most in Lithuania (-47.9 per cent).
