Gathered in Brussels on Tuesday to stop energy inflation, the EU energy ministers stopped on the price level beyond which transactions would no longer be possible in Europe.
by Virginie Malingre (Brussels, European office)
While the war in Ukraine continues to wreak havoc, the twenty-seven want to offer a united front against Vladimir Putin. They therefore wanted to solve the most urgent – and potentially the most conflicting problems – before the European Heads of State and Government meet in Brussels, Thursday, December 15. In several respects, they have succeeded – Hungarian recovery plan, financial assistance to Ukraine, minimal corporate tax – but, on Tuesday, they have come back on a bone that has been poisoning their lives for weeks now: the highly flammable file of the price of the price of gas.
The Council of Energy Ministers which met once again on the subject in Brussels was not concluded. The meeting was “very long and very difficult,” said Jozef Sikela, the Minister of Czech industry, whose country occupies the rotating presidency of the European Union (EU), but ” We were very close to an agreement “. “There has been great progress,” confirmed Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the French Minister for the Energy Transition. “90 % of the text is stabilized, with a limited number of points to close,” she continued. But not the least: in this case, the twenty-seven continue to escape on the level of the price of the gas beyond which the transactions would no longer be possible.
The positions are certainly less distant than they were still fifteen days ago, but they have not yet been sufficiently closer. Today, member states are looking for a trigger price somewhere between 160 and 220 euros, when, at the start of the negotiations, the range went from less than 50 euros to more than 270 euros. In order to find an landing ground, the Czech presidency is now working on a scheme with several thresholds that would meet several trigger conditions.
“Now, we must show that unity is not an empty word,” said Jozef Sikela on Tuesday evening, hoping that the case will be settled on the next Council of Ministers, scheduled for December 19. Understand: Heads of State and Government should not venture on this slippery ground on Thursday. 2> “next winter could be more difficult”
As a diplomat says, from the start, there were on this subject “expectations incompatible on what this mechanism must allow”. Faced with the outbreak of gas prices and worried about the economic and social consequences of rampant inflation, a good fifteen member states, including France, claimed, after summer, a ceiling. The others, at the forefront of which Germany did not want to hear about it. The hostile commission like Berlin, to everything that is similar to an intervention on the markets, took a long time to make a proposal in good and due form. Under pressure, she finished, on November 22, by putting a legislative project on the table, which succeeded in the performance of displeasing everyone.
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