Gas price cap postponed to December, but EU agrees on joint purchases – Corriere.it

Gas price ceiling postponed to a new extraordinary Energy Council in December, probably on the 13th, but agreement reached on the new measures on joint purchases of methane, on the solidarity mechanism and on the simplification of authorizations for the installation of renewables. However, the agreement will be approved when there is also the one on the gas price cap, in a package logic strongly supported by Italy. So the saga continues. However yesterday the Czech presidency in office tried to be optimistic: We don’t uncork the champagne, but at least we put the bottles in the fridge, said Industry Minister Jozef Skela. The timing is still unclear.

New meeting in December

EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson, on the sidelines of the final press conference, said that there is another Council in the week of Christmas, we will meet there: the ordinary meeting is already scheduled for 19 December. Whatever happens, there is a complicated negotiation that the Czech presidency will have to carry on with the member states. The Minister for Energy Security Gilberto Pichetto Fratin reiterated that we do not vote for the market correction mechanism as it stands. Not a question of numbers, but of criteria. It is about finding a point of convergence. I myself told the table that we can even do without setting a ceiling, if the criteria are clear to achieve the goal we pursue, intervene avoiding speculation and the explosion in gas prices (Here the measures confirmed by the government for help families and businesses against high energy costs and reduce electricity and gas).

Pichetto Fratin: There is a draft to work on

A step forward has been made for the Italian minister: Shareable or not, at least there is a draft to work on and the technicians of the various countries are already in contact with each other with the intersection of their hypotheses. Pichetto Fratin spoke of a climate of extreme equilibrium and a conciliatory desire also on the part of Germany and the Netherlands. The goal of reaching an agreement also emerges from the words of the State Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Economy and Climate Action of Germany Sven Giegold that, after pointing out that everyone is unhappy with the Commission’s proposal, there is a real work to be done: of course an agreement possible within the parameters set by the European Council. And the EU leaders in their conclusions spoke of a dynamic price corridor and not of a fixed ceiling as instead in the text of the EU executive. The Spanish Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, observed that in fact a large majority emerged in the Council according to which the setting of a gas price ceiling should be a dynamic and not a static reference.

Waiting for new proposals

For France’s Minister for Ecological Transition Agnes Pannier-Runacher the European Commission will have to make new proposals

and the discussion was difficult because today the European Commission’s proposal does not go far enough to protect our businesses and our industry. The main concern of the Commission and of the countries that do not want a ceiling on the price of gas, with Germany in the lead, is to ensure the security of supplies also in the coming months, when the stocks will have emptied. The negotiation will be complex. Some countries will try to further strengthen the safeguards (already very high as to make the application of the cap practically impossible). The objective of the Czech presidency to reach a political agreement on 13 December on the price cap and then launch the procedure for the formal adoption of the three measures in written form in the following days.