The leaders of the European Union will evaluate this Thursday and Friday the possibility of imposing a cap on the price of gas that lowers the electricity bill, triggered as a result of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, although the initiative still divides the capitals.
Also read: Ukraine: Civilians Evacuate Kherson Region Due to Missile Threat.
In addition, the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Prime Minister of Portugal, will meet before the summit with the French President, Emmanuel Macron, to try to overcome the reluctance of Paris to the construction of the Midcat gas pipeline that connects the peninsula Iberian with the rest of the continent.
I am confident that, despite different national constraints, we will approach our energy debate constructively
This three-way meeting will take place hours before the Twenty-seventh summit to discuss the recent set of energy proposals from Brussels, including the “dynamic” stop to gas, joint purchases for next winter or a pan-European solidarity mechanism for emergencies.
“Some support one part of the package and another does not, others miss a proposal on (expanding) the Iberian model, others say that the cap on gas is going too slowly, others say it is going too far…”, recognizes a senior European official.
The objective of the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, is to get the leaders to bridge these differences and agree on a series of lines of action on which their energy ministers will continue to work in the coming weeks, with the first meeting on Tuesday, October 25 .
“I trust that, despite the different national limitations, we will approach our energy debate constructively, aware of our urgent collective interest,” Michel stated in his letter of invitation to the Heads of State and Government.
The leaders face the debate for the first time with a specific proposal from the Community Executive to put a limit on the price of gas, an intervention that is defended by a large group of countries such as Spain, Italy, France, but rejected by others such as Germany or the Netherlands.
Specifically, Brussels advocates a flexible and temporary cap that puts a ceiling on the main reference index for hydrocarbons (the TTF) in episodes of skyrocketing prices until the bloc has already developed an alternative index that better reflects gas prices. liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Less conflict is generated by the idea of forcing countries to jointly buy at least 15% of the gas to fill the deposits for the winter of 2024, although this initiative has been criticized by the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán.
Iberian exception
They will also address the option of extending the Iberian exception to the entire block, a measure that Brussels did not include in the new package despite the fact that the head of the Community Executive admitted that it is a mechanism that “is worth” exploring.
The European Commission services want to ensure first that a cap on gas in the electricity market across the EU does not lead to an increase in gas consumption and does not increase exports of cheap electricity to mainland grid-connected partners such as the UK. , Switzerland or the Balkans.
The energy debate will be intertwined with the EU’s economic response to the current context and, mainly, with the ways of financing actions to alleviate the bills of national industries.
At this point, the possibility of launching a fund fueled by new joint debt issues has arisen, although the idea clashes again with the position of Germany or the Netherlands, in favor of using the credits still available from the recovery fund.
External relationships
The heads of state and government will once again show their support for Ukraine, both military and financial, and will demand that Russia reverse its annexation of Crimea and the regions of Zaporizhia, Donetsk, Lugansk and Kherson, at a meeting in which President Volodymyr Zelensky will reconnect by videoconference.
Coinciding with the celebration in Beijing of the XX Congress of the Communist Party, European leaders will also discuss China, whom Brussels sees as an “even stronger competitor” against which the EU has to reduce its dependence on the supply of raw materials or semiconductors.
However, the heads of state and government will not approve conclusions after the discussion, in which there is consensus among the Twenty-seven that the relationship with China has become more “complex” in recent years, especially after the war in Ukraine , but not to what extent it is convenient to distance oneself from the Asian giant.
EFE
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