The European Commission "will, in principle, support" the Basque Hydrogen Corridor.

In a meeting with the media in Bilbao to inform on the impact of EU policies in the Basque Country, the spokesperson for the European Commission Representation in Spain, Maciej Berestecki, has said that the EC "will, in principle, support" the Basque Hydrogen Corridor.

As of November 30, the Basque Country had received 838 million euros through the sectoral conferences responsible for distributing funds.

Of the Basque projects pending a decision on the award of Next Generation funds, one of the most relevant is the so-called Basque Hydrogen Corridor (BH2C).

The spokesperson explained that evaluation of this application is at a preliminary stage, but that "it seems interesting to us and, in principle, it will have the support of the Commission".

No figures were mentioned by Mr. Berestecki. The aim of the BH2C, with 124 participant organisations including companies, technology centres and government institutions, is to secure between 30% and 40% of its planned 1.5 billion euros of investment up to 2026: in other words, between 450 and 600 million euros of EU funding.

In the opinion of the EC spokesman, the most important challenge an industrial region such as the Basque Country would have to address through the funds is the decarbonisation of its industry, which is one of the objectives of the BH2C.