The energy ministers of the European Union (EU) will discuss this Tuesday in Luxembourg the proposals presented a week ago by the European Commission to deal with high energy prices and possible interruptions in gas supply this winter.
A week after the European Commission presented new measures to deal with the energy crisis, it is now up to the responsible European authorities to discuss regulatory proposals to strengthen solidarity through better coordination of gas purchases, cross-border and reliable exchanges and prepare to the EU in the face of a possible energy emergency.
Portugal will be represented at the meeting by the Minister of the Environment and Climate Action, Duarte Cordeiro.
The debate comes after EU heads of state and government late last week agreed to work on measures to contain high energy prices, exacerbated by the Ukraine war.
The announcement of this future work was made after several hours of debate among the 27, marked by divergent positions on issues such as temporary limits on gas reference prices and solidarity rules in the community bloc for the availability of gas to all States members in an emergency situation. case.
The first refers to a temporary market correction mechanism to limit the volatility, during a single day, of prices, through a dynamic price cap for transactions in the main European gas exchanges.
In the second, Brussels wants to establish solidarity rules in the EU so that gas is available to all member states in the event of an emergency, such as a break in Russian supply, ensuring that countries can access the reserves of others, especially all because only 18 of them the 27 countries of the EU bloc have storage infrastructure.
More favorable was the discussion on joint gas purchases, with broad support for the creation of legal instruments for such joint purchases, similar to the one carried out for anti-Covid-19 vaccines, but which should only advance in the spring of 2023.
The energy crisis in the EU marked last week’s European summit, held after the European Commission presented, two days earlier, new measures to relax gas and electricity prices, most of which will come into force in winter next year, and when there are fears of cuts in Russian supplies to the EU bloc.
The European Commission also proposed that unspent cohesion funds, up to a total of €40 billion, could be allocated to Member States and regions to help tackle the current energy crisis and ensure progress on structural market reform. of electricity. year to, among other things, decouple the price of electricity from gas.
Geopolitical tensions over the war in Ukraine have affected the European energy market as the EU relies on Russian fossil fuels such as gas and fears supply cuts this winter.
Source: TSF
