Portrait

Teresa Ribera: dreamer or miracle worker?

Spain’s European commissioner, responsible for competition and the green transition, is described as a force to be reckoned with, finding consensus on even the most divisive issues. In Brussels, Paris and Madrid, Contexte spoke to those with an inside track on the personality overseeing one of the EU’s trickiest quandaries: keeping things fair in the race to sustainability.
01 September 2025 at 8h00
Energy
DA Contexte - photo: Emilie Gomez/European Union. DR
by Anna Hubert . Adapted from French by Gabriela Galindo.

The bulk of this article was originally published in French in October 2024.

Teresa Ribera cares neither for gossip, nor for the media’s thirst for it.

Questioned by Contexte in early 2023 about rumours that she might be in the running for a spot at the European Commission, Spain’s then deputy prime minister replied firmly: “No.”

Yet, two years later, it is indeed Ribera who now holds not just one but two of the EU executive’s most powerful titles: executive…

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The European Commission released its highly anticipated subsidy framework on 25 June, setting out how EU state aid can be dished out for the next five years. The clean industrial state aid framework, a key plank of decarbonisation goals, covers everything from nuclear, to clean technology manufacturing, to de-risking private investments in energy infrastructure. Perhaps most controversially, it allows public subsidies to go to a fossil fuel, albeit setting a 2040 phase-out date.
Competition - Energy
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