Why not the south of Spain? Just as much sun and more politically stable.
It's very very far from being a perfect or even good country (for most of us moroccans), but it has an almost bulletproof record w.r.t foreign investment. The usually very slow "makhzen" (state bureaucracy) can suddenly become super super efficient to attract foreign capital. Tanger-MED and the huge automobile industry around it is a very good example of that.
EDIT: Belgium and Norway is the fourth and fifth respectively, and apparently Denmark is planned.
I'm just commenting upon the likely motivations are primarily domestic politics and geopolitics given its pretty obvious that you could achieve similar results by doing this with onshore wind and solar installations in southern Spain with lower technical and cost requirements.
Its definitely true that outside of the EU we are going to be treated differently than if we were EU members. EU members will always come first, and geopolitical spats with say Spain over Gibraltar or France over fishing that would otherwise get mediated via the EU could now be higher risk in future.
the government agrees: https://news.sky.com/story/jersey-fishing-dispute-frances-si...
(and has denied construction of new interconnectors to France since)
Spain would definitely use an interconnector as leverage re: Gibraltar
Every country in the EU submit to the majority law, that's the idea of an union, even France or Germany do not have everything to their liking every time.
If it did that, it wouldn't have gotten out of the common market. The UK is way past sensible choices in its best interests, and is firmly in the "cut its nose to spite the EU".
the answer is: you can't
A better argument would be that digging or laying 3000Km 12GW terrestrial electric line through Spain and France would be expensive and especially difficult to sell to them, even if they could benefit from the energy.
Aquind cancellation is about financial stability of the developper, its russian origin, and politicals connections to the tories and also ecological interest groups lobbying on both side of the interconnector.
Wrong, in any meaningful way, and obviously so: the linked index rates democracy on multiple dimensions, including protection of civil liberties, electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. It’s impossible to rate high on all those issues and not be “stable” in any meaningful sense.
FWIW Morocco is also quite stable, among the best both in Africa and the Arab world.
However, a dictatorship can ALSO be stable - just look at North Korea. Democracy is not the only way to achieve stability.
A few percent more sun, cheaper builders, I can understand this choice.