The idea of limiting gas prices, which is dividing the member states of the European Union (EU), can only work in close cooperation with external partners such as South Korea and Japan, the German chancellor said on Thursday.
Setting a maximum price “always carries the risk that producers sell their gas elsewhere, and that we Europeans end up with less gas instead of more,” Olaf Scholz told the country’s Parliament this Thursday (Bundestag), before a European summit in Brussels.
“That is why the EU needs to coordinate closely with other gas consumers, for example Japan and Korea, so that there is no competition between them,” he stressed.
Several proposals from the European Commission (EC) to reduce energy prices will be discussed between today and Friday at a European summit of heads of state and government in Brussels.
Fifteen states, including France, called for a cap on European gas imports in early October.
However, Berlin is fiercely opposed to this, fearing it will exacerbate liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply tensions in a strained global market, as are Central European countries. [Áustria, Hungria]who still depend on Russian hydrocarbons and fear that Moscow will completely shut down the supply.
Olaf Scholz, for his part, welcomed the European Commission’s proposals “aimed at creating purchasing groups of European companies to purchase gas jointly.”
The chancellor renewed her appeal to the producing countries to act to limit the rise in prices.
“I am convinced that countries like the United States, Canada or Norway, which are in solidarity with Ukraine, have an interest in energy not becoming inaccessible in Europe,” he said.
“Putin also uses energy as a weapon,” he reaffirmed, but the German leader assured that this does not undermine the determination of the West to support Ukraine.
Source: TSF
